None listed
Conditions
Brief summary
Of the one in four young people who are diagnosed with mental disorders, only 35% seek professional help. There are many barriers preventing young people from seeking help such as: lack of recognition of mental health problems, lack of awareness about appropriate mental health services, readiness to seek help, and the stigma associated with mental illness and seeking professional health. Technological solutions have been identified as one of the key areas that should be utilised to improve treatments and access to care. Young people often seek information about health online and often prefer anonymous sources of help to traditional services. Nevertheless, despite the broad interest and vast amount of online services available to assist young people with mental health problems, evaluation is rarely conducted to determine the impact of online services on help-seeking. Focusing particularly on young adults aged 18 to 25 years, we aim to investigate the effects of a dedicated online tool to facilitate help-seeking in young adults compared to usual search strategies. All surveys and recruitment will be conducted online. Young adults will be asked to complete three surveys at baseline, one week, and one month. This project is of international relevance as one of the first dedicated online tool to facilitate help-seeking for young adults and one of the few to evaluate access to care as an outcome. It will also help inform policy and practice with evidence on whether technical solutions can increase help-seeking for young adults using a stepped-care approach.
Interventions
Link is a dedicated online web service to guide users to appropriate avenues for both online and offline sources of care.
The service will triage the user by assessing the area of concern, severity of concern and readiness to access care. For the purposes of this study, users must sign in so that their data can be stored and accessed again. Users can also return and log in to return to data that they have already entered.
Based on the triage, users will also be given detailed information about
Link is a dedicated online web service to guide users to appropriate avenues for both online and offline sources of care. The service will triage the user by assessing the area of concern, severity of concern and readiness to access care. For the purposes of this study, users must sign in so that their data can be stored and accessed again. Users can also return and log in to return to data that they have already entered. Based on the triage, users will also be given detailed information about three services appropriate to their needs and wants plus an additional 'recommended' service. Information about that service including target area, triage criteria, evidence to support it and youth friendliness will be included. Each service listed will have some digital content associated with it, outlining what to expect from the service, a successful story from a young person who has used it and what to prepare for when accessing the service. This information can be accessed through the triage once the user reaches the recommended services page. The website should take a minimum of 90 seconds to complete (as per recommendations for developing websites and apps for young people) but users can spend longer to explore their issues and return if they wish. Participants in the intervention arm will have access to the website for the duration of the trial (1 month in total).
Sponsors
University of Melbourne
Study design
Allocation
Randomised controlled trial
Intervention model
Parallel
Primary purpose
Prevention
Masking
Blinded (masking used) (Subject, Caregiver, Outcomes Assessor)
Eligibility
Sex/Gender
All
Age
18 Years to 25 Years
Healthy volunteers
Yes
Inclusion criteria
To be included in the study, the young adults must: (1) be between 18 and 25 years of age inclusive, (2) live in Australia, (3) have three contact details such as a current valid email address (essential) and residential address (essential), and either a phone number or alternative email address, and (4) as the program is only available in English, it is important that the participants all have sufficient English reading and writing abilities to complete the surveys and complete the Link program.
Exclusion criteria
None
Outcome results
None listed