Understanding and Facilitating Mental Health Help-Seeking of Young Adults: A Socio-technical Ecosystem Framework

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Liu, Jiaying, Zhang, Yan
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Liu, Jiaying
Zhang, Yan
author_facet Liu, Jiaying
Zhang, Yan
contents Prior research on young adults' mental health help-seeking mostly focuses on one particular resource such as a mobile app or digital platform, paying less attention to their lived experiences interacting with the ecosystem of resources. We conducted in-depth interviews with 18 participants about their help-seeking and non-help-seeking experiences. Guided by Social Ecological Theory, we proposed a Socio-technical Ecosystem Framework for mental health care, consisting of four levels of resources, including technological-, interpersonal-, community-, and societal level resources. Using this framework, we identified two types of support systems for help-seeking, single-resource support system and multi-resource support system. These resources support young adults' help-seeking via three mechanisms, \textit{care-giving}, \textit{care-mediating}, and \textit{care-outreaching}, forming various pathways to care. We then pointed out the barriers to resource use at each level and the general challenges in finding a support system. Our findings contributed to a conceptual framework to categorize mental health care. It also serves as a practical framework to identify challenges in the pathways to care and discover design implications.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2401_08994
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Understanding and Facilitating Mental Health Help-Seeking of Young Adults: A Socio-technical Ecosystem Framework
Liu, Jiaying
Zhang, Yan
Human-Computer Interaction
Prior research on young adults' mental health help-seeking mostly focuses on one particular resource such as a mobile app or digital platform, paying less attention to their lived experiences interacting with the ecosystem of resources. We conducted in-depth interviews with 18 participants about their help-seeking and non-help-seeking experiences. Guided by Social Ecological Theory, we proposed a Socio-technical Ecosystem Framework for mental health care, consisting of four levels of resources, including technological-, interpersonal-, community-, and societal level resources. Using this framework, we identified two types of support systems for help-seeking, single-resource support system and multi-resource support system. These resources support young adults' help-seeking via three mechanisms, \textit{care-giving}, \textit{care-mediating}, and \textit{care-outreaching}, forming various pathways to care. We then pointed out the barriers to resource use at each level and the general challenges in finding a support system. Our findings contributed to a conceptual framework to categorize mental health care. It also serves as a practical framework to identify challenges in the pathways to care and discover design implications.
title Understanding and Facilitating Mental Health Help-Seeking of Young Adults: A Socio-technical Ecosystem Framework
topic Human-Computer Interaction
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.08994