JMIR Formative Research

Population-level monitoring of adolescent mental health is a critical public health activity used to help define local, state, and federal priorities. The Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System includes a single-item measure of experiences of sadness or hopelessness as an indicator of risk to mental health. In 2021, 42% of high school students reported having felt sad or hopeless for 2 weeks or more during the past 12 months. The high prevalence of US high school students with this experience has been highlighted in recent studies and media reports.

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) represents a growing concern for public health.

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic inflammatory disease affecting the central nervous system, often leading to poor sleep quality and diminished quality of life (QoL) for affected patients. Sleep disturbances in MS do not always correlate linearly with other symptoms such as anxiety, depression, fatigue, or pain. Various approaches, including stress reduction techniques such as mindfulness-based interventions, have been proposed to manage MS-related sleep issues.

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, multiple policies and guidelines were issued and updated for health care personnel (HCP) for COVID-19 testing and returning to work after reporting symptoms, exposures, or infection. The high frequency of changes and complexity of the policies made it difficult for HCP to understand when they needed testing and were eligible to return to work (RTW), which increased calls to Occupational Health Services (OHS), creating a need for other tools to guide HCP. Chatbots have been used as novel tools to facilitate immediate responses to patients’ and employees’ queries about COVID-19, assess symptoms, and guide individuals to appropriate care resources.

Specific daily actions (eg, goal setting, meaningful activities) are associated with mental health. Performing specific daily actions at a higher frequency is associated with significantly lower baseline symptoms of depression and anxiety, as well as better psychological treatment outcomes for depression and anxiety.

 Major bile duct injuries during laparoscopic cholecystectomy (LC), often stemming from errors in surgical judgment and visual misperception of critical anatomy, significantly impact morbidity, mortality, disability, and health care costs.

Mobile Link is a mobile phone–based intervention to increase access to, and use of, health care services among female entertainment workers in Cambodia who face higher risks for specific diseases and gender-based violence. A multisite randomized controlled trial showed that Mobile Link connected female entertainment workers with outreach workers for information and escorted referrals after 6 months but did not lead to statistically significant improvements in HIV and sexually transmitted infection testing, contraceptive use, and condom use.

The COVID-19 pandemic was a devastating public health event that spurred an influx of misinformation. The increase in questionable health content was aided by the speed and scale of digital and social media and certain news agencies’ and politicians’ active dissemination of misinformation about the virus. The popularity of certain COVID-19 myths created confusion about effective health protocols and impacted trust in the health care and government sectors deployed to manage the pandemic.

This study prospectively evaluated the effects of digitally enabled peer support on mental health outcomes and estimated medical cost reductions among vulnerable adults with symptomatic depression, anxiety, and significant loneliness to address the mental health crisis in the United States.

Smoking contributes to 1 in 3 cancer deaths. At the Stanford Cancer Center, tobacco cessation medication management and counseling are provided as a covered benefit. Patients charted as using tobacco are contacted by a tobacco treatment specialist and offered cessation services. As a novel addition, this study examined the acceptability of a virtual reality (VR) mindful exposure therapy app for quitting smoking called MindCotine.

By enabling individuals with hearing loss to collect their own hearing data in their personal real-world settings, there is scope to improve clinical care, empower consumers, and support shared clinical decision-making and problem-solving. Clinician support for this approach has been established in a separate study.

A large number of modifiable and measurable daily actions are thought to impact mental health. The “Things You Do” refers to 5 types of daily actions that have been associated with mental health: healthy thinking, meaningful activities, goals and plans, healthy habits, and social connections. Previous studies have reported the psychometric properties of the Things You Do Questionnaire (TYDQ)–21-item (TYDQ21). The 21-item version, however, has an uneven distribution of items across the 5 aforementioned factors and may be lengthy to administer on a regular basis.