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Intimate partner violence (IPV) is prevalent and has devastating consequences for college students. Online counseling (OC) may be a way to decrease barriers to help. This study seeks to determine openness to OC compared to face-to-face counseling (F2F) by examining: (1) How openness to OC varies depending on college students' personal and IPV characteristics and (2) How these characteristics vary compared to college non-IPV survivors. Two linear regressions were conducted using a sample from a cross sectional survey. First with the entire sample of college students (N = 1,518) to examine characteristics of those more open to OC and second with only those that identified as experiencing IPV (n = 1,211). The results demonstrated that IPV survivors are less open to OC than to F2F counseling (b = -.23, p <.01). For the model with all college students, those who were significantly more open to OC were female (b = -.39, p <.001), identified as LGBT (b =.23, p <.05), or Asian/Pacific Islander (API) (b =.26, p <.05), and had a physical health issue (b = -.19, p <.05). For the model that only analyzed IPV survivors, the same characteristics were shown to be significantly related to openness to OC. More research is needed to explore why IPV survivors are less open to OC compared to F2F counseling. Exploring why characteristics of female, LGBT, and physical health issues lead to openness to OC could help understand what barriers need to be addressed for wider use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Internet counseling can be a valuable resource for people who cannot seek mental health care due to various reasons. The aim of this study was to analyze the time patterns of first-time contacts made by clients to online counseling services. Data from two online counseling service providers, encompassing 3,291 people, were analyzed. The results showed that people tended to contact online counselors during the seasons with less sunlight (winter and autumn), and during evening and afternoon. There were no pronounced day-of-week effects. These results support, to some extent, the seasonality and time-of-day patterns related to mental disorders and help-seeking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• For hidden youth, online counseling achieves better outcomes than the offline one. • For hidden youth, integrated counseling achieves the best service outcomes. • Online counseling and offline counseling have unique, complementary advantages. The emergence of the Internet has given rise to the continuous development of online counseling since the 1970s. Despite the increasing popularity of online counseling in the globe currently, whether the advantages of online counseling surpasses that of offline counseling is still in controversy. Against this backdrop, this study seeks to compare between online, offline, and integrated counseling (i.e., the combined use of online and offline counseling) in therapeutic outcomes, so as to shed light on the significance of largely developing online counseling in youth contexts in Hong Kong. Targeting 502 hidden youth in Hong Kong who were aged 12–24 as participants, this study adopted a mixed method in doing the comparative analysis of service outcomes in terms of quality of life and sense of well-being. Quantitative results showed that integrated counseling was perceived as achieving the best outcomes among all the three forms of counseling, while online counseling was better than offline counseling. Explained by qualitative analyses, online and offline counseling had their unique advantages which were complementary to each other: While online counseling dealt with individual, psychological issues more effectively, offline counseling helped provide more substantial support in terms of real-time company and tangible resources. The implication is that online counseling has a potential value to be extensively developed in Hong Kong, either as an alternative to offline counseling or being integrated with offline counseling to maximize the service outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]