The relationship between self-disclosure, well-being and therapeutic behaviours during tailored e-mail counselling in a Positive Psychology Intervention

Background: Nowadays self-disclosure of participants is a helpful behaviour in face-to-face therapy. But very little is known about the effect of self-disclosure during online counselling, because the Internet provides a totally different environment. In the current study self-disclosure of the participants is regarded in the context of e-mail support during a Positive Psychology Intervention. It is examined which therapeutic behaviours are used during the e-mail support and which relation they have to the well-being of the participants. Furthermore the factor self-disclosure is examined and how it is related to well-being of participants and therapeutic behaviours. Methods: A subsample of 70 participants was drawn from the dataset of Schotanus-Dijkstra et al. (2015). The participants followed the intervention This is your life and were guided via e-mail. The participant’s well-being was measured with the Mental Health Continuum-Short Form (MHC-SF). The e-mail conversations were content analysed with the help of a coding scheme, which was based on the study of Matten (2016). Spearman’s rho correlations were executed to obtain the relation between therapeutic behaviours and well-being, between self-disclosure and well-being as well as between therapeutic behaviours and self-disclosure. Results; Significant results were found for the relationship between therapeutic behaviours and self-disclosure of the participants.