title: 'You've got to take them seriously': meeting information needs in mental healthcare.
abstract: In this article we explore the practical aspects of providing mental health information over the telephone, and discuss how this may be used to inform the creation of a website. We draw from an ethnographic study of an 'information and listening helpline'. By paying close attention to how the helpline operators 'take seriously' their callers' problems and requests--indeed, by taking the work of the phone operators seriously--we show that the operators artfully talk, categorize and translate to help the individual caller and to satisfy organizational demands. A website is seen by the helpline in question as a logical move to providing accessible information to a wider audience. Whilst web-based and phone-based services might both appear to function along similar lines for providing information, we question how a web-based system might afford or complement the kinds of services that can be done over the telephone.
authors.affiliation: Department of Computing, InfoLab21, Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4WA, UK.
authors.forename: Karen
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Clarke
authors.forename: John
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Rooksby
authors.forename: Mark
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Rouncefield
mesh_terms: D006801:Humans; D020407:Internet; D008605:Mental Health Services / Q000458:organization & administration*; D017216:Telemedicine / Q000379:methods* / Q000458:organization & administration*; D013689:Telephone