Analysis of topics and characteristics of user reviews on different online psychological counseling methods

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijmedinf.2020.104367Get rights and content

Highlights

  • The evaluation of the effectiveness of using online resources for mental health in China showed that people’s ability to use resources effectively limits access to mental health services.

  • In an online psychological counseling service, different counseling methods will produce different effects on different types of counseling patients.

  • Using user reviews, the study showed that different online resources are more suitable than others depending on the individual’s psychological characteristics, needs, and circumstances.

Abstract

Background

Psychological support is available more widely supported by emerging technologies as an addition to face-to-face consultations, more and more people are accessing psychological support using online resources.

Objective

This research provides insights into the perception of the key factors that affect the effectiveness of different online psychological counseling methods through the user reviews of four online psychological counseling modes and the tendency to choose the different counseling methods for users with different psychological problems.

Methods

Using topic modeling analysis, Gooseeker content analysis, and the TextMind Chinese psychological analysis system, we analyzed 163,377 online reviews from 2,375 psychological consultants extracted from a leading online psychological consultation platform in China.

Results

(1) Telephone counseling gains the most preferences among users. Text counseling has strong privacy protection. Video and face-to-face consultations are more authentic and comprehensive. (2) Parent-child education consultation users are more likely to choose face-to-face consultation, patients with common mental illnesses are more inclined to choose online counseling methods than offline consultation, career planning consultation clients prefer video consultation, and text counseling is more consistent with the periodical characteristics of relationship counseling.

Conclusion

The research examined user reviews and used content analysis to understand patients' views on the effectiveness of online counseling methods, which supplement the current research gap through innovation in research methods.

Introduction

According to the statistics of the World Health Organization (WHO), psychological problems have caused 12 % of diseases worldwide, many of whom will not access professional mental health services or receive psychological support. Access to mental health care is limited not only by the stigma [1] but also by issues of accessibility and continuity, including the limitations of time, place [2], and socioeconomic factors [3]. As the e-mental health provides more possibilities for patients with mental illness [4], online counseling, as the interaction between users and mental health professionals through computer-mediated communication technology [5], can not only help users breakthrough structural barriers such as time and place to obtain psychological support from professionals [2] but also provide privacy and emotional security environment to promote the effectiveness of communication [6]. With the awakening of health awareness, increasingly more people are willing to seek psychological support through online psychological counseling but have a low preference to convert will into behavior [7]. However, web-based counseling methods have obvious advantages in improving the availability and continuity of services, which are conducive to psychological counselors' rapid and effective determination of and response to patients' needs [2]. Therefore, it is a major issue to improve the willingness and behavior of patients with mental illness to participate in online counseling.

At present, online psychological counseling service platforms mainly provide four counseling methods: text, telephone, video, and face-to-face consultation. Due to the specific strengths and limitations of different counseling methods, different counseling effects will be produced for users with different psychological problems [[8], [9], [10]]. However, most of the existing studies focus on one of the online psychological counseling methods. Small sample data have been collected through interviews with people of specific age groups, especially adolescents, for statistical analysis [1,[11], [12], [13], [14]]. Therefore, it is an important research issue to analyze the service experience and feedback content comprehensively and on multiple levels through the content generated by online psychological consultation patients to improve the effectiveness of different online consultation methods and achieve the optimal consultation effect.

Mental health is attracting increasing attention in China [15]. Approximately one out of every eight people is troubled by psychological problems [16]. In foreign countries such as the United States, online integrated psychological service platforms such as GoodTherapy and BetterHelp provide qualified service personnel and rich mental health resources for people all over the world [17]. Due to China’s psychological counseling industry started relatively late, although many outstanding companies have emerged in recent years [18], people's willingness, thoughts, and behaviors to seek professional help through the Internet is yet to be determined [15]. Therefore, the aim of the study is to examine the reviews from users who have received online psychological counseling services to better understand the key factors that affect the effectiveness of different online psychological counseling methods, as well as the counseling method preferences of users with different psychological problems.

This paper is organized as following. The next section reviews China's mental health services and studies of different online psychological counseling methods. In the Methods section we propose our research framework and methodology. Then, we report our data collection and analysis results in Section 4. Finally, in Section 5 we provide practical guidance to consult patients and psychological consultants based on the research results and discussing future research suggestions.

Section snippets

Chinese mental health service systems

In China, mental health service models are mainly divided into three types: medicine, education, and society. Among them, the social model of mental health services calls psychological counseling. Generally speaking, counseling objects received by psychological counseling are called "client", and the counselors who provide counseling services are "psychological consultants" who do not have the right to prescribe. They focus more on the psychological process behind the symptoms during the

Research design

We designed a general framework to examine differences in online consultation methods based on user reviews from the online psychological counseling platform consisting of the following steps:

(1) Data and preprocessing: This step includes data collection and data cleaning.

(2) Data analysis: We adopted sentiment classification, topic modeling analysis, Gooseeker content analysis, and the TextMind Chinese psychological analysis system to identify the key factors that affect the effectiveness of

Descriptive statistics analysis

By observing the changes in the numbers of user reviews on different online psychological counseling methods on a psychological consulting platform in the past five years, we found that the number of users of each online consulting method reflects that the trend is increasing each year, but there are great developmental differences between the different online consultation methods. Among them, telephone consultation is the most popular among users while video consultation has not received a

Principal findings

In this study, we examined user reviews and used content analysis to understand patients' views on the effectiveness of online counseling methods. Using data from a leading online psychological consultation platform in China, we incorporated three different techniques, topic modeling analysis, Gooseeker content analysis, and the TextMind Chinese psychological analysis system, to investigate users’ perceptions of effectiveness, psychological characteristics, and choice preferences under

Funding

This research was funded by the Natural Science Foundation of Shanghai, grant number 19ZR1419400.

Summary points

What was already known?

  • Psychological counseling services are an important part of the mental health field. The main form of initial psychological consultation was face-to-face.

  • Patient reviews provide feedback and supervision on doctors' treatment and services while also providing reference opinions for other patients. However, there are very few studies of patients with a mental

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Jingfang Liu: Conceptualization. Lu Gao: Data curation, Formal analysis, Methodology, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing.

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors report no declarations of interest.

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