Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Formative Research
Date Submitted: Jul 2, 2022
Date Accepted: Sep 13, 2022
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Understanding Mental Health Apps for Youth: A Focus Group Study with Latinx Youth
ABSTRACT
Background:
An increasing number of mental health apps (MHapps) are being developed that focus on youth. Additionally, youth report being high users of technologies generally and MHapps specifically. Little is known, however, about youth’s perspectives on MHapps and methods to better involve youth in the process of providing feedback on apps.
Objective:
The goal of this study was to develop a process for eliciting youth perspectives on MHapps in a structured and collaborative way. We also sought to identify early learnings on aspects of MHapps and youths’ use of them that might facilitate discovery, activation, or engagement in MHapps.
Methods:
We created a series of five focus groups sessions that would introduce youth to different categories of MHapps (cognitive behavior therapy apps, mindfulness apps, miscellaneous). Within each category, we select four MHapps and participants would choose one to use for the week and provide feedback through both between-session and in-session activities. At the end of completing all five of the focus groups, participants completed a brief questionnaire to gather their impressions of the apps they had used.
Results:
We identified several aspects regarding MHapps that were important to youth. Youth wanted apps that were youth-centric, simple, could integrate with their offline lives, and also were relatable and accessible. We also found that the mindfulness apps we assigned to youth were viewed most favorably but that cognitive-behavioral therapy apps were viewed as more impactful.
Conclusions:
Eliciting youth feedback on MHapps is critical if these apps are going to serve a role in supporting their mental health and wellbeing. We identified factors that were important to youth and refined a process for collecting feedback. Future work could go broader, i.e., recruiting larger samples of more diverse youth, or deeper, i.e., collecting more information from each youth around interests, needs, barriers, or facilitators or better understanding the various impacts of MHapps using qualitative and quantitative measures. Nevertheless, this study advances formative understanding of how youth might be viewing these tools. Clinical Trial: N/A
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