Key Takeaways for Practitioners
The study reveals several dominant understandings and favored recommendations from Internet-based mental health services:
- Normalizing Life Struggles: Internet-based services often normalize users' concerns, framing them as common human experiences. This approach can reduce feelings of isolation and deviance.
- Encouraging Help-Seeking: A persistent recommendation is for users to seek face-to-face help. This is crucial for comprehensive support but may need balancing with the benefits of online anonymity.
- Promoting Self-Care: Recommendations for self-care are frequent, urging users to adopt healthier lifestyles and engage in social activities.
Implementing Research Outcomes
Practitioners can improve their skills by integrating these insights into their online therapy services:
- Reframe Concerns: Normalize users' concerns to reduce feelings of deviance but also offer new perspectives to help them reframe their understanding of their struggles.
- Encourage Comprehensive Help: While recommending face-to-face help, also recognize the unique benefits of online therapy, such as anonymity and the comfort of self-disclosure.
- Emphasize Self-Care: Provide actionable self-care strategies that users can implement in their daily lives to manage their mental health better.
Encouraging Further Research
The study highlights the importance of including social explanations in responses to users' concerns. Practitioners are encouraged to conduct further research to understand better the social origins of life struggles and how online services can address these effectively.
To read the original research paper, please follow this link: Reaching out to people struggling with their lives: a discourse analysis of answers from Internet-based services in Norway and Sweden
