About Opp
Opp's objective is to enhance the well-being and mental health of young people by increasing their knowledge of mental health, improving their coping skills for managing stress, encouraging help-seeking behavior, boosting self-esteem, enhancing sleep quality, and reducing mental distress.
Opp is divided into two modules: a psychoeducation module and a resource module. The psychoeducation module contains information about mental health (e.g., What is mental health, Why is good mental health important, How to attain and maintain good mental health, What are mental health issues), emotions (e.g., What are emotions, Why are emotions important, Can you control your emotions, What to do when emotions become overwhelming), advice and tips on social relationships and self-esteem, how to communicate and where to seek help. The resource module provides concrete advice and demonstrates exercises like breathing and relaxation exercises, exercises for managing emotions, sleep exercises, and a thought-cleansing exercise.
Preventive Effect
Opp equips young people with knowledge and skills to master challenges and handle stress, thoughts, emotions, and social relationships. It can better prepare young individuals to tackle challenges they encounter and, thus, have a preventive effect on future difficulties.
User Involvement
The app's content is based on user involvement. Youth have been engaged in the project from the development of the content to evaluation. This has been highly valuable for the development of Opp, both in terms of content, design, and terminology. Additionally, relevant services have been involved in an extended reference group comprising social educators, school nurses, youth health station nurses, and psychologists from Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (BUP) and the municipality's low-threshold teams.
Research
The app's content is also based on research. For instance, Opp includes a thought-cleansing exercise based on cognitive behavioral therapy (Ariso & Reyero, 2014). Sleep advice and tips have been developed in collaboration with sleep researchers from the Children in Bergen study (Hysing et al., 2018). Furthermore, breathing and relaxation exercises are recognized techniques for reducing stress.
Opp received positive feedback in a user survey among 30 young individuals. Participants in the study found Opp interesting to use (74%), that the app worked well (96%), the design was good (93%), and the app was suitable for the target audience (89%). Most believed that Opp would likely increase their knowledge of mental health (93%; Høgsdal, Kaiser & Kyrrestad, 2023). Read more about the user survey here.
A larger national effectiveness study is being conducted in 2022/2023. Learn more about the study here: Kaiser, Rye, Jakobsen, Martinussen, Høgsdal, & Kyrrrestad, 2023
