Go offline for mental health support
by Michèle Nardelli
For people struggling with mental health or addiction problems, getting help on the Internet is not the answer. Comprehensive analysis carried out by psychology honours students at UniSA shows web-based information is often difficult to understand and inaccurate.
The students, Christina Challis, Lee McDonald and Matthew Cornish examined online health information on Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), Suicide and Alcohol Dependency and found in all instances much of the information was inaccessible for average readers and had little or no supporting referencing.
Senior lecturer at UniSA’s School of Psychology, Dr Nadine Pelling says the combined student research is the most comprehensive review to date of Internet-based mental health information and it raises concerns about people using the Internet as a central source of information on these issues.
"Books and even pamphlets on mental health issues have to meet editorial and organisational standards, but the Internet has no such arbiter – anyone can have a presence there," Dr Pelling said.
"My own research supports what the students have found - the Internet may offer a useful mode of casual communication but is a dubious source of knowledge to support professional practice and individuals needing personal help would be best advised to go straight to a professional."
Dr Pelling says while organisations such as Beyond Blue have established good websites, Internet searching can be hit and miss and the good sites don’t always pop up first.
The students researched across a range of search engines and examined up to 210 websites each. For about half of all sites (and in some cases more than half) the reading age of the material was well above average literacy rates for both Australia and the US.
In the case of suicide prevention, 51 per cent of sites had no references and for OCD sites, 77.6 per cent were unreferenced. The sites were also inconsistent in the amount of bio-psycho-social information provided and its accuracy according to standard psychological literature.
Other negative factors included no indication of how recent the material was and in the case of alcohol dependency, more than half the sites were commercial with hyperlinks to treatment products.
"I think the take home message is that we need to adopt a ‘browser beware’ approach especially when it comes to sensitive and complex issues such as mental health support," Dr Pelling said.