Abstract

BackgroundThe Internet is of great importance in today’s health sector, as most Internet users utilize online functions for health related purposes. Concerning the mental health care sector, little data exist about the Internet use of psychiatric patients. It is the scope of this current study to analyze the quantity and pattern of Internet usage among mental health patients.MethodsPatients from all services of the Department of Psychiatry at a university hospital were surveyed by completing a 29-item questionnaire. The data analysis included evaluation of frequencies, as well as group comparisons.Results337 patients participated in the survey, of whom 79.5% were Internet users. Social media was utilized by less than half of the users: social networks (47.8%), forums (19.4%), chats (18.7%), blogs (12.3%). 70.9% used the Internet for mental health related reasons. The contents accessed by the patients included: information on mental disorders (57.8%), information on medication (43.7%), search for mental health services (38.8%), platforms with other patients (19.8%) and platforms with mental health professionals (17.2%).Differences in the pattern of use between users with low, medium and high frequency of Internet use were statistically significant for all entities of social media (p < 0.01), search for mental health services (p = 0.017) and usage of platforms with mental health professionals (p = 0. 048).The analysis of differences in Internet use depending on the participants’ type of mental disorder revealed no statistically significant differences, with one exception. Regarding the Internet’s role in mental health care, the participants showed differing opinions: 36.2% believe that the Internet has or may have helped them in coping with their mental disorder, while 38.4% stated the contrary.ConclusionsMost psychiatric patients are Internet users. Mental health related Internet use is common among patients, mainly for information seeking. The use of social media is generally less frequent. It varies significantly between different user types and was shown to be associated with high frequency of Internet use. The results illustrate the importance of the Internet in mental health related contexts and may contribute to the further development of mental health related online offers.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12888-014-0368-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Highlights

  • The Internet is of great importance in today’s health sector, as most Internet users utilize online functions for health related purposes

  • Mental health related Internet use is common among patients, mainly for information seeking

  • Our results show that 70.9% of Internet users search for mental health related contents on the Web

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Summary

Introduction

The Internet is of great importance in today’s health sector, as most Internet users utilize online functions for health related purposes. Concerning the mental health care sector, little data exist about the Internet use of psychiatric patients. It is the scope of this current study to analyze the quantity and pattern of Internet usage among mental health patients. There has been little research about the specific characteristics of Internet use of psychiatric patients, even though mental disorders are frequent in industrialized countries [26] and are of great relevance for health and health related research. Since psychiatric disorders can be cause and effect of social inequalities [27], a disadvantage of this patient population regarding Internet use can be suspected

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