Evaluation of the e–Mental Health Intervention Make It Training From Patients' Perspectives: Qualitative Analysis Within the Reduct Trial

Abstract

Background Make It Training is an e–mental health intervention designed for individuals with cancer that aims to reduce psychological distress and improve disease-related coping and quality of life. Objective This study evaluated the experienced usefulness and usability of the web-based Make It Training intervention using a qualitative approach. Methods In this study, semistructured interviews were conducted with participants at different cancer stages and with different cancer entities. All participants had previously taken part in the Reduct trial, a randomized controlled trial that assessed the efficacy of the Make It Training intervention. The data were coded deductively by 2 independent researchers and analyzed iteratively using thematic codebook analysis. Results Analysis of experienced usefulness resulted in 4 themes (developing coping strategies to reduce psychological distress, improvement in quality of life, Make It Training vs traditional psychotherapy, and integration into daily life) with 11 subthemes. Analysis of experienced usability resulted in 3 themes (efficiency and accessibility, user-friendliness, and recommendations to design the Make It Training intervention to be more appealing) with 6 subthemes. Make It Training was evaluated as a user-friendly intervention helpful for developing functional coping strategies to reduce psychological distress and improve quality of life. The consensus regarding Make It Training was that it was described as a daily companion that integrates well into daily life and that it has the potential to be routinely implemented within oncological health care either as a stand-alone intervention or in addition to psychotherapy. Conclusions e–Mental health interventions such as Make It Training can target both the prevention of mental health issues and health promotion. Moreover, they offer a cost-efficient and low-threshold option to receive psycho-oncological support.