Evaluating a Mobile Phone Intervention

University of Southern California

Status: Completed

Conditions: Rumination - Thoughts; Depression

Treatments: Behavioral: Mobile-phone delivered Treatment for Excessive Rumination

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT04554706

UscCalifornia

Details and patient eligibility

About

This clinical trial intends to study the efficacy of a mobile phone delivered intervention in reducing depression-related rumination.

Full description

Here we propose to test a novel intervention to help individuals manage their depressive rumination. The intervention is based on a just-in-time, adaptive-intervention (JITAI) design. A JITAI is "an intervention designed to address the dynamically changing needs of individuals via the provision of the type/amount of support needed, at the right time, and only when needed ." This study is also to address one major concern regarding designing JITAI interventions: the burden on participants in having to be engaged with the intervention through diaries, self-reports, and other forms of assessment procedures daily. To reduce this burden, we first pilot test an interactive narrative form. An interactive narrative is an essential form of storytelling that involves certain interactive features such that audiences or readers of the story can have the feeling that they are actively engaging in certain forms of interactions with the story characters.

To test the efficacy of such an intervention, there will be a one-month three-arm clinical control trial to reduce depressive rumination. There are three conditions: a JITAI interactive narrative condition, a non-narrative JTIAI condition, and a wait-list control condition. This study could contribute to our knowledge in designing more effective interventions in curbing depression using mobile technology. It can also advance our theoretical knowledge of the role of interactive narratives in reducing user burden in mobile health.

Enrollment: 150 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18+ years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Participants who have a current self-reported clinical diagnosis of being depressed ( mild to moderate depression and major depressive disorder)
• Participants should be 18 or older.
• Participants should have a working smartphone and daily access to the internet.

Exclusion criteria

-Participants who do not have regular access to the internet and a smart phones will be excluded.

Trial design

Primary purpose: Treatment

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Factorial Assignment

Masking: Triple Blind

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150 participants in 3 patient groups

a JITAI interactive narrative condition (Narrative JITAI)

Experimental group

Description:

This arm is an exploratory condition, which tested whether story-based JITAI would be an effective way to deal with rumination.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Mobile-phone delivered Treatment for Excessive Rumination

a JITIAI non-interactive condition

Experimental group

Description:

This arm uses the regular JITAI ( mobile phone delivered) intervention to provide treatment for ruminative thoughts.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Mobile-phone delivered Treatment for Excessive Rumination

a wait-list control condition

No Intervention group

Description:

Participants in this arm will be put on a waitlist without receiving active treatment upon the end of the study.