Online counselling and goal achievement: Exploring meaningful change and the types of goals progressed by young people

Jacob, Jenna; Silva, Luís Costa da; Sefi, Aaron; Edbrooke‐Childs, Julian

doi:10.1002/capr.12363

Cited by 11 publications

(29 citation statements)

References 63 publications

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“…This was followed by goals concerning personal growth, although the third most common type of goals set focussed on managing interpersonal difficulties. This reflects previously cited research which reported that children and young people set goals related to personal growth and independence, functioning, coping with specific symptoms and problems, understanding and improving self‐expressing emotions and relationship/interpersonal difficulties (Bradley et al., 2013; Jacob et al., 2016, 2020). The fact that young adults were more likely to set personal growth goals and adolescents focussed on developing coping mechanisms may be reflective of developmental stage (Scales et al., 2016).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 82%

Measuring goal progress using the goal‐based outcome measure in Jigsaw – A primary care youth mental health service

O’Reilly

McKenna

Fitzgerald

2021

Child Adoles Ment Health

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Background: Jigsaw is a primary care youth mental health service designed to increase access to and utilisation of mental health supports for 12-to 25-year-olds. Effectiveness in community youth mental health services is typically assessed using standardised instruments. The aim of this study was to examine the effectiveness of Jigsaw's brief intervention model of support using an idiographic tool, the goal-based outcome (GBO) measure. The study also aimed to explore the type of goals set by young people engaging with this service. Method: The study sample consisted of a secondary dataset of 4839 young people aged 12-25 years (63.5% female, 36.5% male) who engaged with one of Jigsaw's 13 brief intervention services. Overall, 7366 goals set using the GBO were examined. Inductive thematic analysis was conducted to examine the type of goals set by young people, and inferential analyses were used to examine statistical and reliable changes in goal progress. Results: The goals young people set focused on developing coping mechanisms and personal growth and managing interpersonal difficulties. Mean scores for progress towards goals improved significantly from pre-to postintervention. The reliable change index (RCI) indicated that change greater than 2.82 points represents reliable change on the GBO, with 78.6% of young people showing reliable improvement. Demographic characteristics did not impact goal progress. Conclusion: These findings suggest Jigsaw's brief intervention model of support is effective in assisting young people reach their goals and that the GBO is a suitable measure for young people attending a community-based youth mental health service. Key Practitioner Message• The goal-based outcome (GBO) tool is a brief 3-item idiographic outcome measure that can be used by young people and their clinicians to assess goal progress in therapy.• Three overarching themes were identified for goals set by young people engaging with a communitybased youth mental health service using the GBO: developing coping mechanisms, personal growth and managing interpersonal difficulties.• This study showed Jigsaw's brief intervention model of support is effective in helping young people reach their goals.• The GBO demonstrates good internal consistency, and change greater than 2.82 points represents reliable change for young people attending community-based youth mental health services. This RCI for the GBO may be of value to clinicians in providing individual-level change information, in the absence of measurement error.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 82%

Measuring goal progress using the goal‐based outcome measure in Jigsaw – A primary care youth mental health service

O’Reilly

McKenna

Fitzgerald

2021

Child Adoles Ment Health

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“…Initially, four domains of wants and needs were identified from Kooth's Theory of Change that represent the needs for mental health support in children and young people that access the web-based therapy service (Hanley et al, 2020;Hanley et al, 2021). Such domains were also previously explored investigating the goals collaboratively set by young people at the onset of their contact with the service (Hanley et al, 2017;Jacob et al, 2020). These domains allowed to set the parameters of the constructs that the measure will be seeking to capture concerning what children and young people seek in an online service, for example, whether individuals seek informational or emotional support and whether this support was directed to support interpersonal or intrapersonal change.…”

Section: Phase I: Item Generationmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Session Wants and Need Outcome Measure: The Development of a Brief Outcome Measure for Single-Sessions of Web-Based Support

Garcia¹,

Salhi

Sefi

et al. 2021

Front. Psychol.

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Single-session, brief interventions in therapy for young people make up a large proportion of service provision, including in digital mental health settings. Current nomothetic mental health measures are not specifically designed to capture the benefit or ‘change’ directly related to these brief interventions. As a consequence, we set out to design an outcome measure to concretely demonstrate the value of single-session interventions. The Session Wants and Needs Outcome Measure (SWAN-OM) aims to capture in-session goals and focuses on being user-centric, elements critical to the success of single-session and brief interventions which typically are asset-based and solution-focused. We describe the 4-stage process that was followed to develop this measure: (I) classical item generation and development, (II) content and (III) face validity pilot testing, and (IV) a user-experience approach with young people using framework analysis. This final stage was critical to ensure the integration of this outcome tool into a web-based digital therapy setting, a context which adds another layer of design complexity to item and measure development. This iterative methodology was used to overcome the challenges encountered and to place the needs of the young people and service practitioners at the centre of the design process, thus ensuring measure usability. To end, we highlight the main lessons learnt from engaging in this design process. Specifically, the needs of a measure for single-session interventions are considered, before outlining the learning associated with integrating the measure into a digital mental health platform. Both of these areas are emerging fields and, as such, this study contributes to our understanding of how an idiographic patient outcome theory driven measure can be created for use in a web-based digital mental health therapy service.

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“…Where the articulated goals moved, it was notable that students reported high levels of goal achievement and that these goals moved further than in comparable data with young populations ( Jacob et al, 2021 ). As with earlier studies in web-based therapeutic resources ( Musiat et al, 2014 ; Santucci et al, 2014 ), despite aiming to be student focused, the service had a relatively high attrition rate.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 84%

“…Kooth Student proves no exception and, as a consequence, a number of the individuals who articulated goals would not have returned to them to report progress. In accounting for this, some studies only consider those individuals’ who return to the goals that they articulate ( Jacob et al, 2021 ), whereas the data reported here included goal scores that both were and were not returned to. Given the varied ways that individuals use web-based services, the importance of developing appropriate means of successfully monitoring such work proves vitally important for service providers such as this.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In particular, the anonymous nature of such contact enhances the complexity of interpreting outcome scores. Idiographic measures, such as GbOM, have therefore been suggested as one means of capturing appropriate evaluative information and increasing engagement in services ( Sefi and Hanley, 2012 ; Jacob et al, 2021 ). In considering this further, Ersahin (2016) developed a taxonomy of goal categories based upon the goals that young individuals set in web-based therapy sessions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Therapeutic Goals Set by University Students in an Anonymous Web-Based Therapy and Support Setting

Hanley

Prescott

Sefi³

2022

Front. Psychol.

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The interest in student mental health and wellbeing has increased in recent years. Additionally, there is a rising volume of students seeking support. Numerous online resources have been developed to meet this need, including anonymous web-based therapy. To date, there has been little focus upon how students may utilise such a service, and this study examines routine evaluation data (solicited from a Goal-based Outcome Measure) from a United Kingdom based service provider. Over the course of one academic year (2018–2019), 211 students articulated therapeutic goals within Kooth Student, a web-based therapy and support service for individuals in higher education. These goals were examined for key trends. The students identified a total of 625 goals to work on in therapy, with individuals setting an average of three goals each. The most common goals focused upon obtaining additional support within the service and exploring their emotions. The results suggested that female students were more likely to move towards achieving their goals, with goals that did move shifting an average of 7.74 on a 10-point scale. Practical goals that focused upon getting more help, both inside and outside the service, were most likely to be achieved. In contrast, self-help/self-care goals were less likely to be achieved. These results provide a helpful insight into how students made use of therapy and highlight the importance of the interaction that web-based services have with other provision (web-based and in-person). They also demonstrate the challenge of capturing meaningful outcome data in anonymous services.

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Online counselling and goal achievement: Exploring meaningful change and the types of goals progressed by young people

Abstract: This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.

Cited by 11 publications

References 63 publications

Measuring goal progress using the goal‐based outcome measure in Jigsaw – A primary care youth mental health service

Measuring goal progress using the goal‐based outcome measure in Jigsaw – A primary care youth mental health service

The Session Wants and Need Outcome Measure: The Development of a Brief Outcome Measure for Single-Sessions of Web-Based Support

The Therapeutic Goals Set by University Students in an Anonymous Web-Based Therapy and Support Setting

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