A Longitudinal Goal Setting Model for Addressing Complex Personal Problems in Mental Health

Goal setting is critical to achieving desired changes in life. Many technologies support defining and tracking progress toward goals, but these are just some parts of the process of setting and achieving goals. People desire to set goals that are more complex than the ones supported through technology. People use goal-setting technologies longitudinally, yet the understanding of how people’s goals evolve is still limited. We draw understanding from the collaborative practices of mental health therapists and clients in how they set goals longitudinally. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 11 clients and 7 therapists who practiced goal setting in their therapy sessions. Based on the results, we create the Longitudinal Goal Setting Model in mental health, a three-stage model. The model describes how clients and therapists select among multiple complex problems, simplify complex problems to specific goals, and adjust goals to help people address complex issues. The findings show collaboration between clients and therapists can support transformative reflection practices that are difficult to achieve without the therapist, such as seeing problems through new perspectives, questioning and changing practices, or addressing avoided issues.