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

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...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Hanley, Terry, Prescott, Julie, Sefi, Aaron
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9394726/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36003101
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.745537
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author Hanley, Terry
Prescott, Julie
Sefi, Aaron
author_facet Hanley, Terry
Prescott, Julie
Sefi, Aaron
author_sort Hanley, Terry
collection PubMed
description 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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spelling pubmed-93947262022-08-23 The Therapeutic Goals Set by University Students in an Anonymous Web-Based Therapy and Support Setting Hanley, Terry Prescott, Julie Sefi, Aaron Front Psychol Psychology 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. Frontiers Media S.A. 2022-08-08 /pmc/articles/PMC9394726/ /pubmed/36003101 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.745537 Text en Copyright © 2022 Hanley, Prescott and Sefi. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Hanley, Terry
Prescott, Julie
Sefi, Aaron
The Therapeutic Goals Set by University Students in an Anonymous Web-Based Therapy and Support Setting
title The Therapeutic Goals Set by University Students in an Anonymous Web-Based Therapy and Support Setting
title_full The Therapeutic Goals Set by University Students in an Anonymous Web-Based Therapy and Support Setting
title_fullStr The Therapeutic Goals Set by University Students in an Anonymous Web-Based Therapy and Support Setting
title_full_unstemmed The Therapeutic Goals Set by University Students in an Anonymous Web-Based Therapy and Support Setting
title_short The Therapeutic Goals Set by University Students in an Anonymous Web-Based Therapy and Support Setting
title_sort therapeutic goals set by university students in an anonymous web-based therapy and support setting
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9394726/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36003101
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.745537
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