COVID-19 and the Healthy Minds Program for Educators (CAHMP-ED)

University of Wisconsin (UW)

Status: Completed

Conditions: Well-being; Psychological Stress; Depression; Anxiety; Psychological Distress

Treatments: Behavioral: Healthy Minds Program Foundations Training

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT04426318

EDUC/COUNSELING PSYCH (Other Identifier)

A171600 (Other Identifier)

Protocol Approval 10/15/2020 (Other Identifier)

2020-0533

Details and patient eligibility

About

This study is a randomized controlled trial (RCT) of the four-week Healthy Minds Program (HMP) app Foundations training in employees of a mid-size urban school district in the United States during the summer of 2020, in the midst of the novel coronavirus pandemic. A 3-month follow-up in the fall of 2020 will also be conducted.

Participants will be recruited via email and mailed postcards, and will first complete an online screen. Eligible participants will then enter a waiting zone for between 2-days and 2-weeks before they are sent the online pre-test. Upon completion of the pre-test, participants will be assigned to condition via a simple random number generator. If assigned to the intervention (i.e., the Healthy Minds Program App), participants will receive instructions and support in downloading and activating the app. Every 7-days over the 4-week intervention period participants in both conditions will complete the same set of measures. A full battery of measures will be administered a second time post-test, following the 4-week intervention period. Three-months after post-test, a follow-up assessment will be conducted.

The investigators predict that participants assigned to the intervention will demonstrate significantly reduced psychological distress after the intervention, and these decreases will persist at the 3-month follow-up. Further, it is hypothesized that baseline participant characteristics and early experience of the intervention will predict treatment adherence, study drop-out and outcomes, and that treatment engagement will moderate outcomes.

Enrollment: 698 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18+ years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Ages 18 years old and up
• Employees of a K-12 school district in Wisconsin
• Smartphone or device that can download apps from Google Play or the iTunes app store

Exclusion criteria

• Individuals under 18 years old

• Significant meditation experience:

  1. Meditation retreat experience (meditation retreat or yoga/body practice retreat with significant meditation component),
  2. Regular meditation practice weekly for over 1 year OR daily practice within the previous 6 months; or
  3. Previous use of the HMP app.

• Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS) depression score > 70

Trial design

Primary purpose: Treatment

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: Single Blind

---

698 participants in 2 patient groups

Healthy Minds Program Foundations Training

Experimental group

Description:

Healthy Minds Program (HMP) Description: The HMP app was developed by Healthy Minds Innovations at the UW Center for Healthy Minds, and is based on the work of Richard Davidson, PhD. HMP is designed to promote and protect psychological well-being through sustainable skills training. The program is grounded in constituents of psychological well-being identified in empirical literature. HMP provides core content, with instruction administered through a curriculum of high-quality guided practices. HMP is based on research on eudaimonic well-being (e.g., environmental mastery, purpose) and brain-based skills that underlie these qualities (e.g., regulation of attention, mental flexibility). HMP has >100 guided audio practices that address 4 constituents of well-being: awareness, connection, insight, and purpose.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Healthy Minds Program Foundations Training

Wait-list control

No Intervention group

Description:

Participants assigned to the wait-list control will not receive treatment for the intervention and follow-up period. They will be provided access to the HMP Foundations training after completing follow-up testing.