[Online social support as a mode of psychosocial intervention: A review of scientific literature, avenues for future research, and recommendations for practitioners]. / Le soutien social en ligne comme mode d'intervention psychosociale : revue de littérature, pistes de recherche et recommandations pour les intervenants.

OBJECTIVE: The goal of this review is to present online social support interventions described in recent scientific literature, in order to (i) guide organizations wishing to develop such an intervention or to improve an existing program, and (ii) to identify future research directions and recommendations for practitioners. METHODS AND RESULTS: 59 peer-reviewed articles presenting online social support interventions (2006-2016) were analyzed by using a thematic grid focusing on theoretical perspectives on social support, the online platforms used and their functionalities, the process of intervention development and evaluation, the modalities of participation and the facilitation methods, the documented impacts of interventions, and finally future research directions and recommendations for practitioners. A narrative methodology was used to identify challenges in intervention development and implementation, in order to provide guidance to organizations who want to develop or improve their online social support services. CONCLUSIONS: Several research directions and recommendations for the development of online social support interventions are suggested, including the need to develop theoretical models of online social support and enrich traditional models of social support, the need to understand the benefits associated with different levels of participation, the importance of needs assessment in the development of interventions, and the contribution of qualitative methods to the evaluation of interventions.

Reducing Negative Outcomes of Online Consumer Health Information: Qualitative Interpretive Study with Clinicians, Librarians, and Consumers.

BACKGROUND: There has been an exponential increase in the general population's usage of the internet and of information accessibility; the current demand for online consumer health information (OCHI) is unprecedented. There are multiple studies on internet access and usage, quality of information, and information needs. However, few studies explored negative outcomes of OCHI in detail or from different perspectives, and none examined how these negative outcomes could be reduced. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to describe negative outcomes associated with OCHI use in primary care and identify potential preventive strategies from consumers', health practitioners', and health librarians' perspectives. METHODS: This included a two-stage interpretive qualitative study. In the first stage, we recruited through a social media survey, a purposeful sample of 19 OCHI users who had experienced negative outcomes associated with OCHI. We conducted semistructured interviews and performed a deductive-inductive thematic analysis. The results also informed the creation of vignettes that were used in the next stage. In the second stage, we interviewed a convenient sample of 10 key informants: 7 health practitioners (3 family physicians, 2 nurses, and 2 pharmacists) and 3 health librarians. With the support of the vignettes, we asked participants to elaborate on (1) their experience with patients who have used OCHI and experienced negative outcomes and (2) what strategies they suggest to reduce these outcomes. We performed a deductive-inductive thematic analysis. RESULTS: We found that negative outcomes of OCHI may occur at three levels: internal (such as increased worrying), interpersonal (such as a tension in the patient-clinician relationship), and service-related (such as postponing a clinical encounter). Participants also proposed three types of strategies to reduce the occurrence of these negative outcomes, namely, providing consumers with reliable OCHI, educating consumers on how to assess OCHI websites, and helping consumers present and discuss the OCHI they find with a health professional in their social network or a librarian for instance. CONCLUSIONS: We examined negative outcomes associated with using OCHI from five complementary perspectives (consumers, family physicians, pharmacists, nurses, and health librarians). We identified a construct of OCHI use-related tension that included and framed all negative outcomes. This construct has three dimensions (three interdependent levels): internal, interpersonal, and service-related tensions. Future research can focus on the implementation and effectiveness of the proposed strategies, which might contribute to reducing these tensions.

[Online text-based psychosocial intervention for Youth in Quebec]. / Potentiels et enjeux de l'intervention par texto : l'expérience de Tel-jeunes au Québec.

BACKGROUND: In 2013, Tel-jeunes created a text messaging intervention program to reach youth aged 12 to 17 years on their cell phones. Tel-jeunes was the first in the country to offer a text-based brief psychosocial interventions performed by professional counselors. Researchers were contacted to document and evaluate the program. OBJECTIVES: The research aimed to: 1) determine motives, contexts and issues that lead young people to use the SMS service; 2) document the characteristics of text-based brief intervention; and 3) assess the advantages and difficulties encountered by counselors who respounded to youth text-messages. METHODS: We conducted a multimethod research from November 2013 to May 2014. We held four focus groups with 23 adolescents aged 15 to 17 who had or not used the SMS service, conducted a content analysis of a corpus of 13,236 text messages (or 601 conversations), and two focus groups with 11 Tel-jeunes counselors, just over a year after the implantation of the service. RESULTS: Our findings show that the SMS service meets youth needs. They identify text messaging to be their prefered mode of communication with Tel-jeunes when they need support or information. Moreover, the service reaches young people who would not have felt confortable to contact Tel-jeunes by phone. We identified three dominant issues in youths demands: romantic relationships, psychological health and sexuality. Perceived benefits of the service include anonimity and privacy (cell phone providing the ability to text anywhere). Youth participants also appreciated writing to counselors as they felt they had more time to think abouth their questions and answers to the counselor. Counselors were more ambivalent. They considered text-based intervention to be very effective and satisfactory to adress youth information requests, but reported difficulties when dealing with more complex problems or with mental health issues. They reported that text-based communication makes it more difficult to assess youth emotional states, found the discontinuity of text-based conversations very frustrating, and experienced problems when dealing with several youth at the same time. They also struggled with some the computer-based platform features. CONCLUSIONS: Finding suggest that text-based intervention are now essential to reach out to youth seeking for information and help. But, Tel-jeunes text-based service required adaptations of the intervention model. Adjustment were made by the managment team when implementing the service which required taking into account youth needs, engaging in a continuous dialogue with counselors and working with the suppliers of the text-based platform to improve its features. Futur challenges include reaching out for boys, conducting interventions with younger youth who feel confortable contacting the service by SMS, and managing urgent requests initiated via web text-messaging apps rather than mobile phones.

[Not Available]. / Internet et santé des minorités sexuelles au Canada : une étude exploratoire.

A large number of organizations working with LGBT minorities are currently in the process of developing websites and using online intervention strategies with a view to providing information, promoting prevention and improving healthcare and quality of life. This paper outlines the findings of a study conducted among organizations that responded to a survey on their internet activities and interventions, and aims to provide a national Canadian profile of the field. The results of this survey highlight the many advantages which community organizations tend to associate with this type of intervention. But they also underline the constraints which such organizations face and the difficulties that may arise as a result of developing online interventions.