gms | German Medical Science

Background/research question: The purpose of psychenet.de, an e-mental health portal existing since 2011, is to increase the users’ knowledge about mental disorders and treatment options by providing mental health information, to empower affected peopl to be active partners in medical decisions and the course of treatment. Additionally, the portal aims to offer support to find appropriate local mental health care services, to provide low-threshold screening and achieve socially disadvantaged groups by providing content in different migrant-relevant languages. This study aimed at investigating the current (1) acceptance and (2) use of the e-mental health portal psychenet.de.

Methods: For investigating acceptance, an online cross-sectional survey was conducted in 2019 including items on perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, attitude towards using, and perceived trust. Common metrics of website use were obtained via the analysis tool Matomo, which offers various data categories that are of interest: information about visitors, traffic sources and viewed content. Data were analyzed referring to three broad categories of metrics serving as use performance indicators: (1) metrics on usage, (2) metrics on visitors loyality, (3) traffic source metrics.

Results: The majority of the N = 369 respondents of the acceptance survey reported reported having a mental disorders (n = 173) or were relatives from persons with mental disorders (n = 109). The portal was assessed as “good” or “very good” by 74% of the respondents. High levels of agreement (86–92%) were shown for statements on the perceived ease of use, the behavioral intention to use the portal, and the trustworthiness of the portal.

Regarding use of the website in 2019, on average over 110.000 unique visitors per month were identified. The portal was predominantly accessed by mobile divices (80%). Fact sheets and screening tools were most often visited.

Conclusion: The acceptance survey provides evidence that psychenet.de appears to be a usable, useful and trustworthy information resource for a broad target group. Analysis of website use shows a highly accessed website for persons who search the Internet to find information about mental disorders.

The insights gained here can be used to make the portal in the future even more demand-oriented so that their benefits for potential users can be further optimized. A regular review of the materials and the extension of psychenet.de by including additional mental disorders, additional tools and languages are planned.