TY - JOUR AU - Jadnanansing, Raj AU - Dekker, Jack AU - Etwaroo, Kajal AU - Dwarkasing, Rudi AU - Lumsden, Vincent AU - Bipat, Robbert AU - Blankers, Matthijs PY - 2022 DA - 2022/6/9 TI - General Demographics and Behavioral Patterns of Visitors Using a Self-help Website for Identification of and Intervention in Alcoholism and Common Mental Disorders in Suriname: Descriptive Study JO - JMIR Form Res SP - e33793 VL - 6 IS - 6 KW - eHealth KW - mental health KW - alcohol use disorder KW - depression KW - anxiety KW - Facebook KW - alcohol disorder KW - alcohol KW - self-help KW - alcoholism KW - Suriname AB - Background: Digital health applications have been shown to be an accepted means to provide mental health information and advice in various high- and middle-income countries. Started in 2015, ehealth.sr was the first website to offer preventive information, self-tests, and unguided digital self-help for depression, anxiety symptoms, and problematic alcohol use in Suriname, an upper middle-income country in South America. Objective: This study aimed to assess the general demographics and behavioral patterns of the visitors of ehealth.sr, as well as to evaluate different promotional channels to attract the target audience to the website. Methods: Data collection for this study took place between August 2015 and December 2020. Conventional promotion channels such as newspaper and radio advertisements as well as social media advertisements were used to attract users to the website. The number of visits and activity on the website was registered using Google analytics and the website’s internal activity log. Results: On average, about 115 unique visitors accessed the website per month. The average number of visits to the website increased notably when social media advertisement campaigns were conducted (266 per month in 2018) compared to when traditional advertisements campaigns through papers, radio, and television were used (34 per month in 2019). Of the 1908 new visitors, 1418 (74.32%) were female. On average, visitors accessed 2 (SD 0.3) pages of the website and a session lasted 2.6 (SD 0.9) minutes. The most popular pages for intervention on the website were those for the mood or anxiety screening (731/942, 77.6%) as opposed to those for alcohol screening (211/942, 22.4%). People aged <45 years (on average, 2.2 pages per session for 3.2 minutes) made more use of the website than people aged ≥45 years (on average, 1.7 pages per session for 2 minutes). Conclusions: Promotion via social media led to more visitors to the website than newspaper or radio advertisements. Younger age groups and females visited the website more often. The pages on preventive information and brief self-tests were visited more frequently than the self-help modules. In general, user adherence to the website in terms of the average session duration and number of viewed pages per session is low and is a key point of concern for the successful implementation of digital mental health websites. SN - 2561-326X UR - https://formative.jmir.org/2022/6/e33793 UR - https://doi.org/10.2196/33793 UR - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35679108 DO - 10.2196/33793 ID - info:doi/10.2196/33793 ER -