How adolescents use an online question-answer (QA) service to address their mental issues

Autor: Kari Sand, Gunhild Tøndel, Eva Lassemo
Rok vydání: 2019
Předmět:
Zdroj: European Journal of Public Health. 29
ISSN: 1464-360X
1101-1262
DOI: 10.1093/eurpub/ckz186.152
Popis: Background Ung.no is Norway’s largest information website directed at adolescents, with more than 800 000 users per month. Ung.no offers an online QA service in which 13-20-year-olds post their questions and get answers from professionals. Anonymous answers are publicly available online. Descriptive analysis of over 125 000 questions written to ung.no from 2016-2018 showed that most adolescents asked questions about body and health. Subsequent qualitative content analyses of the body-and-health-questions showed that mental health is one of the most prominent topics in the adolescents’ questions. The aim of the present study is to investigate how adolescents use the QA service to address mental issues. Methods A random selection of 360 questions - stratified by age and gender - concerning body and health were made. The questions were analysed by use of a qualitative thematic analysis with a functional textual approach, i.e. examining the questions’ linguistic functions. Results In the sample, 20 % of the questions concerned mental issues, ranging from negative feelings of sadness, fear or anger, to disorders such as psychosis and depression and grave issues such as suicidal thoughts and self-harm. Three main functions of the adolescents’ questions were identified: 1) Telling about their troubles for the first time; some of them did not ask a question in their post, they just described their feelings; 2) Asking what to do when nothing else has been of help and 3) Seeking confirmation of information they have already received from health experts, teachers, parents or friends, or read on the internet. Conclusions A low threshold service such as an anonymous QA service seems to be useful for adolescents when they need and want to tell about their mental issues or seek help, often for the first time. The outreach of the ung.no QA service is universal, and hence has great potential public health impact. Key messages Adolescents use a low threshold online QA service to address a wide range of mental problems. Adolescents use a low threshold online QA service to tell about their mental issues for the first time.
Databáze: OpenAIRE
Externí odkaz: