System design of a text messaging program to support the mental health needs of non-treatment seeking young adults

Young adults (ages 18–25) experience the highest levels of mental health problems of any adult age group, but have the lowest mental health treatment rates. Text messages are the most used feature on the mobile phone and provide an opportunity to reach non-treatment engaged users throughout the day in a conversational manner. We present the design of an automated text message-based intervention for symptom self-management. The intervention comprises: (1) psychological strategies (i.e., types of evidence-based techniques leveraged to achieve symptom reduction) and (2) interaction types or the form that intervention content takes as it is delivered to and elicited from users.