Promoting Youth Mental Health via Text-Messages: A New Zealand Feasibility Study

A growing body of research has documented the positive effects of gratitude programs on participants' mental health and well-being. For children and adolescents, these programs typically rely on school-based group designs tied with a health curriculum, whereas innovative technology-based programs are relatively understudied.

This experiment investigated the feasibility and efficacy of a gratitude text-messaging program for promoting adolescent mental health relative to a positive reflective control condition.

Young people showed positive changes over the course of the program in their general sense of gratitude, subjective well-being, and reduced depressive symptoms, with some evidence that those with higher levels of depressive symptoms benefited more from the gratitude program. However, there were no significant differences across the two groups in the magnitude of these mental health changes. Participants in both conditions valued and were highly engaged with the interactive text-messaging approach.

This interactive e-health promotion strategy seemed to promote strong engagement and showed promising effectiveness with young people, with some challenges to feasibility due to the labor intensive nature of sending and responding to a large number of text-messages. The importance of carefully considering risk management strategies when developing such programs was also highlighted.