Who Are the Young People Choosing Web-based Mental Health Support?

headspace has published an article in the Journal of Medical Internet Research that compares eheadspace to headspace centre clients, i.e. comparing those who seek online support to those who seek in-person support. The article went through an extensive peer-review process.

Some key findings reported in this article include:

• More eheadspace than centre clients were female (78% of eheadspace clients compared to 59% of centre clients),
• eheadspace clients tended to be older than centre clients (though both services had the same peak age of presentation at 15 to 17 years), and
• Psychological distress scores were higher for eheadspace than centre clients (reasons for this are proposed), however eheadspace clients were earlier in the development of a mental health problem.

The article concludes that online mental health support services such as eheadspace can lead young people to seek help at an earlier stage of illness, and appear to be an important component in a stepped care continuum of mental health care.

The full article can be accessed here.  

Authors: Professor Debra Rickwood, Marianne Webb, Vanessa Kennedy and Nic Telford.