Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Human Factors
Date Submitted: Aug 25, 2022
Date Accepted: Feb 11, 2023
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited.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.
Perceived usability and acceptability of a digital mental health platform among participants with depressive disorder, anxiety disorder and other clinically diagnosed mental illnesses in Singapore: a usability and acceptability study of mindline.sg
ABSTRACT
Background:
mindline.sg is a stress management and coping website that can be accessed anonymously in Singapore for free. While designed to serve individuals that are well or have mild depression/ anxiety symptoms, mindline.sg may potentially be used by clinicians as an adjunct therapeutic aid for patients with clinically diagnosed mental illnesses.
Objective:
To determine the perceived usability, usefulness and acceptability of mindline.sg among individuals with diagnosed mental disorders in a clinical setting.
Methods:
A cross-sectional study with 173 participants was conducted from in the waiting room of a psychiatrist’s office at the National University Hospital in Singapore. Participants waiting for an appointment were given 30 mins and a simple set of instructions to use three features of mindline.sg. After using mindline.sg the participants answered a set of online survey questions on their smartphones, including a 16-item subset of the Post-Study System Usability Questionnaire (PSSUQ) for usability measurement. Five questions designed to understand the perceived usefulness and acceptability of mindline.sg. Multiple linear regression is used to determine the associated demographic factors with the overall PSSUQ scale. A chi-square test is performed to determine the association of psychiatric conditions and the acceptability and perceived usefulness mindline.sg. For the purpose of this study, P < .05 is considered significant.
Results:
We observed that the overall (mean 2.86, SD 1.46), system usefulness (mean 2.74, SD 1.46) and information quality (mean 2.98, SD 1.33) scores of the PSSUQ survey are within a 99% confidence interval of a literature-derived norm, which all have the interpretation of having high perceived usability. However, interface quality (mean 2.98, SD 1.33) scored worse than the literature-derived norm, although still better than the neutral score of four. We find participants with lower than a GCE O-Level or N-Level education tend to give a worse usability score as compared to others (β=0.49, P=.017). Participants who have not been hospitalized previously due to their condition are also more likely to give a worse PSSUQ score as compared to individuals who have been hospitalized (β=0.18, P=.025). mindline.sg is also deemed to be generally useful and acceptable with all the survey questions receiving more than 60% positive response. We found no association between the type of self-reported psychiatric disorders and the perceived usefulness and acceptability of mindline.sg
Conclusions:
Our results show that mindline.sg is generally perceived as usable and acceptable by individuals with a mental disorder in Singapore. The study suggests improving usability amongst individuals with low education levels. Particularly promising is the finding that previously hospitalized individuals have significantly higher perceived usability and satisfaction of the site, suggesting potential impact could be found amongst a moderately-to-severely at-risk clinical population. The effectiveness of mindline.sg as an adjunct therapy for individuals with diagnosed mental illnesses should therefore be explored in future studies.
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