R u there? : the user experience of Mobile Instant Messenger couselling

Mental health care provision has always lagged behind general health services, especially in rural, poor countries. With the widespread adoption of mobile phones, many South Africans now have easy access to health-related information and services, including counselling via Mobile-Instant-Messenger (MIM). This research hopes to address the paucity of literature n MIM-based counselling. Using an adaptive, Mobile-based questionnaire, I collected quantitative and qualitative data about the service users (n= 568) of a popular MIM-counselling servicecalled ‘DAS/Angel’, offered free of charge, via MXit -a popular Mobile-Instant-Messenger program.The service user group was found to be predominantly young (Mage= 20.17, sd = 4.97), largely unemployed (44.19%), Black African (72.98%)with a gender split (53.79% female, 46.21% male) similar to population gender demography, χ2 (1, N = 567) = .43, p = .51. Despite the MIM-counselling being offered in English, service users’ first languages varied widely, across all 11 official South African languages. Qualitative data about the experience of using MIM-counselling was analysed using thematic analysis with two coders, with a significant level of agreement (κ> .80) across all 4 categorical datasets.The MIM-counselling experience was described positively as safe and accessible, which encouraged openness, and negatively in terms of practical concerns related to service access times, and specific shortfalls related to the quality of counselling provision. Reasons for non-use of MIM-counselling (n= 2285) were explored, as were experiences of using telephone counselling and face-to-face counselling. The findings are discussed in terms of concerns from the literature such as the lack of face-to-face contact and ethical issues of the medium. The ability of the medium to overcome access barriers to mental health care is considered in terms of the potential role of MIM-counselling.

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

Department of Psychology

Year dc:date.issued

2014

Author dc:creator

• Groll, Nicholas Jay

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Tredoux, Colin

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/11427/13184

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/13184