Psychenet.de: Development and process evaluation of an e-mental health portal

Background: E-mental health interventions can have a positive impact on patient-reported and clinical outcomes. The purpose of this project was to develop a user-centered e-mental health portal.Methods: The development of the portal www.psychenet.de included mixed-methods techniques for needs assessment to identify user-relevant content. Furthermore, user-centered design techniques were applied by utilizing individual usability testing with cognitive task analysis. First, a basic version of the portal was created and introduced to the public by means of a media campaign. After the development of module-specific content, exposure and use of the portal was investigated as part of a process evaluation.Results: Relevant content identified by needs assessment covered both, overarching and diagnosis-specific topics. Results of the process evaluation showed a highly accessed website. During the first 18 months, 119 423 visits were tracked. The portal was predominantly accessed by Google searches (73.9%), while 1...