JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Young adults’ mental health is characterised by relatively high rates of stress and anxiety and low levels of help-seeking behaviour. mHealth interventions could offer a cost-effective, and readily available, avenue to provide personalized support to young adults. More research needs to be directed at the development of mHealth intervention targeting youths specifically, as well as on how to reach young people and to effectively intervene to improve psychological wellbeing.

Objective:

The objective was to acquire perceptions from high school students to inform the development of a prototype mHealth intervention aiming to promote psychological wellbeing.

Methods:

A mixed methods design was used to 1) investigate high school students’ perceptions about stress and its consequences in daily life, as well as their ability to cope with stress and, 2) explore their preferences and design recommendations for an mHealth intervention to improve psychological wellbeing. Students from two high schools in the south east of Sweden were invited to take part in the study. Recruitment of high school students was completed over a six-week period (between the 25th October and 7th December 2018). Recruitment entailed inviting students to complete a stress test (screening and feedback) on their mobile phones. After completing the stress test, all participants were invited to complete a follow-up questionnaire and take part in telephone interviews.

Results:

A total of 149 high school students completed the stress test of which 68 completed the questionnaire. There were 67 free-text comments distributed across the items. The majority of participants, 55 (81%), stated that they coped with stress better or in the same way after engaging in the stress test, due to time management, dialogue with others and self-refection. Four participants, 3 women and one man, took part in telephone interviews. Three main themes were found in the interview data: perceptions about stress, design features and intervention features.

Conclusions:

Stress was described as a condition caused by high demands set by oneself and the social environment that impacted their physical health, personal relationships, school performance, and emotional wellbeing. Participants claimed that mHealth intervention need to be clearly tailored to a young age group, be evidence-based and offer varied type of support such as information about stress, exercises to help organize tasks, self-assessment, coping tools, recommendations to other useful websites, literature, blogs, self-help books or role models. Using mobile phones seemed to be a feasible and acceptable platform for the delivery of an intervention.