TY - GEN
T1 - "Suddenly, we got to become therapists for each other"
T2 - 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2018
AU - O'Leary, Katie
AU - Schueller, Stephen M.
AU - Wobbrock, Jacob O.
AU - Pratt, Wanda
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 Copyright is held by the owner/author(s).
PY - 2018/4/20
Y1 - 2018/4/20
N2 - Talk therapy is a common, effective, and desirable form of mental health treatment. Yet, it is inaccessible to many people. Enabling peers to chat online using effective principles of talk therapy could help scale this form of mental health care. To understand how such chats could be designed, we conducted a two-week field experiment with 40 people experiencing mental illnesses comparing two types of online chats-chats guided by prompts, and unguided chats. Results show that anxiety was significantly reduced from pre-test to post-test. User feedback revealed that guided chats provided solutions to problems and new perspectives, and were perceived as "deep," while unguided chats offered personal connection on shared experiences and were experienced as "smooth." We contribute the design of an online guided chat tool and insights into the design of peer support chat systems that guide users to initiate, maintain, and reciprocate emotional support.
AB - Talk therapy is a common, effective, and desirable form of mental health treatment. Yet, it is inaccessible to many people. Enabling peers to chat online using effective principles of talk therapy could help scale this form of mental health care. To understand how such chats could be designed, we conducted a two-week field experiment with 40 people experiencing mental illnesses comparing two types of online chats-chats guided by prompts, and unguided chats. Results show that anxiety was significantly reduced from pre-test to post-test. User feedback revealed that guided chats provided solutions to problems and new perspectives, and were perceived as "deep," while unguided chats offered personal connection on shared experiences and were experienced as "smooth." We contribute the design of an online guided chat tool and insights into the design of peer support chat systems that guide users to initiate, maintain, and reciprocate emotional support.
KW - Behavioral interventions
KW - Health
KW - Mental health
KW - Peer counseling
KW - Peer support
KW - Psychotherapy
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85046942789&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85046942789&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1145/3173574.3173905
DO - 10.1145/3173574.3173905
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85046942789
T3 - Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings
BT - CHI 2018 - Extended Abstracts of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
PB - Association for Computing Machinery
Y2 - 21 April 2018 through 26 April 2018
ER -
