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Background COVID-19 required mental health services to quickly switch from face-to-face service delivery to telehealth (telephone and videoconferencing). This evaluation explored implementation of a telehealth mental health response in a regional public mental health provider. Methods A mixed methods approach, combining service use data, brief satisfaction surveys, and qualitative interviews/focus groups was undertaken. Number and types of contacts from de-identified mental health service data were compared between April–May 2020 and April–May 2019. Mental health consumers and providers completed brief online satisfaction surveys after videoconferencing sessions. Attitudes and perspectives on the implementation of telehealth were further explored by applying a descriptive qualitative framework to the analysis of interview and focus group data supplied by consumers and providers. Template thematic analysis was used to elucidate key themes relating to the barriers and enablers of telehealth uptake and future implementation recommendations. Results Total contacts decreased by 13% from 2019 to 2020. Face-to-face contacts decreased from 55% of total in 2019 to 24% in 2020. In 2019, 45% of contacts were by telephone, increasing to 70% in 2020. Only four videoconferencing contacts were made in 2019; increasing to 886 in 2020. Consumer surveys (n = 26) rated videoconferencing as good or excellent for technical quality (92%), overall experience (86%), and satisfaction with personal comfort (82%). Provider surveys (n = 88) rated technical quality as good or excellent (68%) and 86% could achieve assessment/treatment goals with videoconferencing. Provider focus groups/interviews (n = 32) identified that videoconferencing was well-suited to some clinical tasks. Consumers interviewed (n = 6) endorsed the ongoing availability of telehealth within a blended approach to service delivery. Both groups reflected on videoconferencing limitations due to infrastructure (laptops, phones, internet access), cumbersome platform and privacy concerns, with many reverting to telephone use. Conclusions While videoconferencing increased, technical and other issues led to telephone being the preferred contact method. Satisfaction surveys indicated improvement opportunities in videoconferencing. Investment in user-friendly platforms, telehealth infrastructure and organisational guidelines are needed for successful integration of videoconferencing in public mental health systems.

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Ignoring or withholding a response from a stimulus causes it to become affectively devalued. Leading accounts posit that this is due to negative affect elicited by neurocognitive inhibition when it is applied to resolve conflict from distracting or otherwise inappropriate stimulus/response representations. Other research, however, suggests that stimulus/response conflict may itself elicit negative affect and devalue stimuli, raising questions about whether effects previously attributed to inhibition may instead reflect the emotional impact of conflict, per se. To address this, we measured affective ratings of art-like patterns that previously appeared on critical trials of a task-switching paradigm (ABA vs. CBA task sequences) known for its capacity to distinguish behavioural effects of inhibition and conflict. Stimuli from the ABA-sequence experimental condition showing behavioural evidence of backward inhibition (n-2 repetition costs) received more negative ratings than those from the CBA-sequence control condition. This stimulus-devaluation effect was not impacted by the level of conflict associated with high uncertainty or low uncertainty about upcoming task order. Moreover, the response-time index of inhibition was larger on ABA trials in which the associated stimuli later received negative ratings than on trials preceding relatively positive ratings. Inhibition therefore appears to have negative affective consequences that exceed any emotional impact of conflict, with fluctuations in inhibition linked to subsequent stimulus evaluations.

Cyberbullying and non-consensual sexting are prevalent and potentially harmful online behaviours. However, little is known about the attitudes and beliefs that underpin these behaviours in ciswomen and cismen and the extent to which they explain the online experiences of trans and gender diverse (TGD) people. A sample of 638 ciswomen, 722 cismen, and 146 TGD adults 18 to 66 years of age (M = 23.27, SD = 3.66), completed a survey of online perpetration behaviours, victimization experiences, and positive attitudes/beliefs about cyberbullying and sexting. MANCOVAs revealed significant gender differences in terms of both cyber and sexting perpetration and victimization. On average, ciswomen reported 8% less cyberbullying perpetration and 17% less non-consensual sexting perpetration than cismen, and experienced 77% more victimization from non-consensual sexting. TGD adults similarly reported 8% less cyberbullying perpetration than cismen, but also 65% less non-consensual sexting perpetration than cismen, as well as experiencing 77% more victimization from non-consensual sexts. MANCOVAs also revealed that cismen held more positive attitudes and beliefs about cyberbullying and sexting than ciswomen and TGD adults. Multigroup path analyses further revealed that positive attitudes and beliefs were related to perpetration behaviours but differently for different genders, with pro-cyberbullying attitudes/beliefs associated with perpetration behaviours in TGD adults, and pro-sexting attitudes/beliefs associated with perpetration behaviours in cisgender adults. These results highlight gender differences in online perpetration and victimization, extend this observation to TGD populations, and demonstrate the importance of underlying attitudes and beliefs.