Figure 1

Example search strategy (MEDLINE) and list of handsearched journals. The search was structured to search for studies with four key characteristics: adolescents, technology, self help and mental health treatment. Each search used a combination of free text and subject headings. Examples are given below, and the entire search strategy is available from the authors. The search combined these four search sets so that studies were identified that included adolescents and technology, and in addition had terms relating to either self help or mental health treatment. The listed journals were hand searched from first issue 1995 to March-May 2005.