PONE-D-21-05340

Service user experiences and views regarding telemental health during the COVID-19 pandemic: a co-produced framework analysis

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Vera San Juan,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

Please pay careful attention to the length of the manuscript, the comments about the tables and clarifying some of the context-specific terms for mental health services.  It is also a journal requirement to adhere to standard reporting guidelines for qualitative research.  i suggest adding a COREQ or similar checklist as a supplementary file.

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PLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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Reviewer #1: N/A

Reviewer #2: N/A

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

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Reviewer #1: Thank you for your article. It was a great pleasure to review it. The article addresses a crucial and actual topic. The participatory methodology utilized is exciting and enhances the research objectives.The results are thoroughly described, the discussion addresses the proposed questions and the results and the implications suggested are meaningful. I recomend to publish the article as it stands.

Reviewer #2: This is an excellent manuscript that is important for the field as we consider new ways of working. i have some recommendations to strengthen it further:

1. There are some minor grammatical errors in the abstract that should be attended to

2. Please specify number of interviews in abstract

3. Background: greater attention to context of COVID-19 in the UK and how this impacted on care delivery is needed so that readers outside the UK can better understand the need for these service changes

4. In the methods please report according to COREQ or similar standard reporting guidelines for qualitative research- this is a journal requirement

5. How was consent for the interviews managed: remotely or in person

6. Table 1- some of the categories are hard to follow for an international reader- the urban/rural distinction is not clear for example. Would a town be urban or rural?

Table 2- please add %

7. At what point in the pandemic did service users access the services and organisations described in Table 2 and 3. I may have missed it, but I think it may be useful to foreground more at what point in the pandemic service users were interviewed and the time period in the pandemic that they were asked to reflect on. Their experiences of mental health services may have been very different in a "hard" lockdown compared to a softer lockdown or between waves of infection. This links back to point 3.

8. The results are very long as there is room to consolidate these by removing some of the quotes, especially where there is repetition.

9. Discussion. Any thoughts about whether these findings are relevant for settings outside of the UK?

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Service user experiences and views regarding telemental health during the COVID-19 pandemic: a co-produced framework analysis

PONE-D-21-05340R1

Dear Dr. Vera San Juan,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

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Kind regards,

Frédéric Denis, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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