A qualitative study of sexual minority young people’s experiences of computerised therapy for depression

Abstract

Consumer perspectives are increasingly being sought and this user input is especially useful for improving services. Our study provides important in-depth feedback on Rainbow SPARX from the perspective of sexual minority youth, and it highlights that computerised therapies can be successfully modified for groups traditionally under-served by mainstream mental health interventions.

Annual Research Review: Digital health interventions for children and young people with mental health problems – a systematic and meta‐review

“…Some of these issues are applicable to mental health services in general and are concerned with stigma, embarrassment and shame (Clement et al., ). Other factors are specifically related to accessing digital interventions, and include: reduced motivation to engage in cCBT without reinforcement; inadequate access to information about DHIs and their effectiveness; lack of technological access; the belief that DHIs may be impersonal with limited interaction; lack of tailoring to their specific presenting problems; and acceptability of DHIs for CYP at different ages and developmental stages (Fleming, Dixon, Frampton, & Merry, ; Lal et al., ; Lucassen et al., ; Mitchell & Gordon, ; Pretorius et al., ; Richards & Timulak, ).…”

Is Digital Treatment the Holy Grail? Literature Review on Computerized and Blended Treatment for Depressive Disorders in Youth

“…Table 1 presents details of the included studies (k = 33). Sixteen studies were aimed at computerized treatments, of which nine were unguided computerized treatments (four computer-based and five internet-based) [30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38] and seven studies were guided computerized treatments (one computer-based and six internet-bases) [39][40][41][42][43][44][45], two studies at blended treatment [46,47], two studies compared unguided computerized, blended-and face-to-face treatment to no treatment [48,49], and eight studies were aimed at self-help internet-based games [50][51][52][53][54][55][56][57]. Furthermore, two studies that were focused on the use of an online monitoring tool aimed at registering and monitoring treatment progression [58,59] and three studies were aimed at characteristics of online interventions or studied the preferred modes of help seeking [60][61][62].…”

“…Sixteen studies were mainly focused on the feasibility, usability, and acceptability of computerized and blended interventions. The study designs were mixed and they contained qualitative studies with focus groups of patients, healthy adolescents or mental health professionals (k = 6) [41,53,54,56,58,59], randomized controlled trials (k = 3) [43,47,48], pre-post designs without control group (k = 5) [31,46,50,51,55], and cross-sectional studies (k = 2) [32,37]. Three studies were mainly focused on the preferences of patients regarding treatment modalities [32,60,62].…”

Computer-Based and Online Therapy for Depression and Anxiety in Children and Adolescents

“…SPARX has also been adapted for sexual minority youth (Rainbow SPARX) (Lucassen et al 2013(Lucassen et al , 2015a and has shown some evidence of effectiveness and acceptability in a small open trial (Lucassen et al 2015b). Moreover, SPARX has been shown to be acceptable (Fleming et al 2012a) and effective (Fleming et al 2012b) among adolescents attending alternative education programs for those excluded or alienated from mainstream high schools.…”