Psychenet.de: Development and process evaluation of an e-mental health portal

Abstract

Background: E-mental health interventions can have a positive impact on patient-reported and clinical outcomes. The purpose of this project was to develop a user-centered e-mental health portal.

Methods: The development of the portal www.psychenet.de included mixed-methods techniques for needs assessment to identify user-relevant content. Furthermore, user-centered design techniques were applied by utilizing individual usability testing with cognitive task analysis. First, a basic version of the portal was created and introduced to the public by means of a media campaign. After the development of module-specific content, exposure and use of the portal was investigated as part of a process evaluation.

Results: Relevant content identified by needs assessment covered both, overarching and diagnosis-specific topics. Results of the process evaluation showed a highly accessed website. During the first 18 months, 119 423 visits were tracked. The portal was predominantly accessed by Google searches (73.9%), while 17.6% of visits were related to direct traffic.

Discussion: Serving as a complement to face-to-face consultations, www.psychenet.de attempts to inform about mental disorders, and engage patients in the course of their treatment. Results of the process evaluation confirm the high relevance and potential of the portal and can be used for further improvements and extensions in the future.

• e-mental health service
• exposure
• internet interventions
• process evaluation method
• need's assessment
• usability test

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Annabelle Metzner, Juliane Thiel, and Iris Extra for their work in the project as student research assistants.

Declaration of interest

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

FUNDING

This project was funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (funding number: 01KQ1002B).