Participants expressed a clear desire for the availability of centralized information, access to professionals, and ‘peer to peer’ support, when asked about the potential features of a virtual clinic.
Regarding participants’ preferred topics for information, they expressed a preference for information about general wellbeing, symptoms of mental disorders, how to problems related specifically to university students, like homesickness and study stress. Participants expressed a strong need for mental health information, that is unsurprising given that reading informational websites is the most highly utilized and preferred methods of accessing mental health support on the Internet among university students. While coping skills, and anxiety were among the top rated topics of interest reported in a survey that assessed the views of university students toward an online mental health intervention, work life’ balance, time and stress management.
Participants also expressed a desire to connect with mental health professionals through the virtual clinic.
Models for human involvement need to be flexible and responsive to the availability of professionals in different university environments. So this raises important problems regarding resourcing and the implementation of ‘universitybased’ virtual clinics over time and in different settings. Groups within the university like trained laystudents, consumers, and clinical psychology trainees could provide support, moderation, or clinical services to users, that may reduce the degree of mental health professional involvement required.
In terms of the kinds of professionals types that participants wanted to access, participants preferred psychologists and counselors, particularly those with skills and experience relevant to the university student population.
Whenever using methods that they perceived as less confronting, it appeared from the discussion that although participants expressed a strong preference for connecting with professionals, they wanted to do so on their own terms. It’s a well use of video calling or Skype was not rated favorably by since it was considered to be And so it’s more personal, reliable, and conducive to building mutual understanding. Remember, since they were concerned about their ability to communicate their feelings through writing. Furthermore, it was seen as a particularly suitable platform for consolidating online mental health resources and providing should be reluctant to access other services due to stigma.
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The results of this study suggest that although university students are generally in favor of a virtual clinic, they have reservations about privacy, trustworthiness, and the ability of online interventions to deliver identical quality of care as other services. It’s also important to ensure that information about privacy and models of information sharing are made explicit to service users and are within their control. Privacy concerns and stigma are also major problems for university students, who fear that disclosure of, or seeking Actually the complete bibliographic information, a link to the original publication on http. Increased awareness of the effectiveness of online mental health interventions is needed among students to increase their confidence in this sort of treatment. Thus, online services targeting university students could be built on evidencebased key concepts, and streamline or simplify the been expressed by young people in a case study of the development of an online community forum for young people. Higher levels of moderation might be required to ensure the safety of users, in light of evidence suggesting that lower levels of moderation were associated with higher levels of depressive symptoms and symptom contagion effects among users of an online self harm support group. With all that said… Participants believed that banning discussion of suicide should be stigmatizing. a bunch of participants indicated a desire to remain anonymous, that has been previously found to be extremely important to users of online mental health forums. Basically, while balancing concerns about distress and safety problems with concerns about the perpetuation of stigma is going to prove highly challenging, in practice. Participants expressed concern about the possibility of bullying or exacerbation of distress in forums, and that this might be circumvented by providing a clear set of rules governing use of the forum and the presence of an experienced moderator. They acknowledged that discussion of suicide will require close monitoring and should focus on problems commonly experienced by university students, participants in this study feared that tailoring a virtual clinic to university students relevant articles will increase the appeal and likelihood of uptake of an online service for students, and indeed this was identified as an important priority among endusers of virtual clinics for other chronic health conditions just like diabetes. Uptake of a service just like this within an university environment will require cooperation and buy in from all levels within the university, including the executive, health and student services, student organizations, heads of faculties and departments, residential halls, and teaching staff.
This paper presents the first step in a larger usercentered design process being undertaken to develop the virtual clinic.
Despite the impact that untreated mental health problems can have in emerging adulthood, mental health problems still remain undertreated in this vulnerable group. Thus, the findings of this research have direct implications for the development of online interventions to improve the mental health of university students. Actually the data obtained in this study could be used to develop and build prototypes for testing with students and similar stakeholder groups. Feedback from testing sessions may be used to refine the prototypes for further testing and finalize the functionality that will comprise the virtual clinic.
There are a couple of limitations associated with the current research that require consideration.
a few participants disclosed having previously experienced mental health problems throughout the focus groups and framed their responses to the questions looking at the their own experiences. Preexisting relationships between group members may have potentially biased the discussion. I know it’s arguable that reasonable diversity in regards to gender, domestic and international student status, and discipline of study was obtained in the sample to represent the wider student body. To provide prevention tools to students without symptoms, nevertheless the virtual clinic is designed to target mental health. To assist not only those with current mental health problems. Remember, we did not ensure that participants who invited other students to attend were allocated to different groups, as composition of the groups was based purely on when participants were available to attend. Surely it’s unclear to what extent the views of students without mental health problems are applicable to those of students experiencing a mental illness. Given that participants ‘self selected’ to participate and this study was conducted in one university setting, the views expressed may not represent the views of ANU students generally, or students from other universities. Participants were not selected on the basis of current or previous experience of a mental disorder, and their mental health status was not assessed.
the authors wish to acknowledge Julia Reynolds, Anthony Bennett, Robert Tait, Philip Batterham, and Alison Calear for assistance with developing the focus group questions, and John Gosling for his assistance preparing the manuscript for publication. So this project was resourced by the Young and Well CRC. Participants also expressed concerns about the privacy of their personal information and who will have access to it. KMG. Did you know that the Young and Well Cooperative Research Centre resourced this project. Therefore this may be associated with high rates of perceived stigma among university students, or fear among students that disclosure of having experienced a mental disorder should be linked to their academic records. National Health and Medical Research Council Fellowship (No. Actually the Young and Well CRC is established under the Australian Government’s Cooperative Research Centres Program.