Examining the Efficacy of a Single Session Online Mental Health Program

Utah State University

Status: Completed

Conditions: Psychological Well-Being; Psychological Flexibility; Psychological Distress

Treatments: Behavioral: ACT Guide Lite

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT06139718

IRB: #13673

Details and patient eligibility

About

There is a large body of evidence demonstrating that Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) can be delivered in a self-guided format to improve mental health among college students. However, previous research indicates there are challenges in engaging students in adhering to these time intensive, multi-session self-guided resources. Brief self-guided single session interventions could provide an accessible and acceptable intervention that is easier to adhere to, given their lower intensity and response effort for participation. This proposed study seeks to evaluate a single session online ACT Guide Lite intervention in a sample (n = 100) of Utah State University (USU) college students 18 years of age or older. A randomized controlled trial (RCT) design will be used in which students are randomized to receive ACT Guide Lite or to a waitlist condition in order to test the following predictions: (1) participants assigned to ACT Guide Lite will improve more on the primary therapeutic process of change, psychological flexibility, relative to those not receiving intervention, (2) participants assigned to ACT Guide Lite will improve more on distress, well-being, and interest in seeking help, relative to those not receiving intervention, (3) ACT Guide Lite will be acceptable to college students as indicated by recruitment rates, rates of completing ACT Guide Lite, and self-reported program satisfaction, and (4) areas for future program revisions will also be identified through participants' written feedback on their experiences using the program. USU students will be recruited to participate in the study through the SONA research platform in the Fall 2023 semester. All study procedures will be completed through the secure Qualtrics online research platform, in addition to email and phone contacts prompting relevant steps for the study. All analyses will be run with multilevel modeling with the full intent-to-treat sample to test time by condition interactions.

Enrollment: 61 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18+ years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• 18 years or older
• a current USU student
• not have used any of the USU ACT Guide programs before

Exclusion criteria

• NA

Trial design

Primary purpose: Treatment

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

---

61 participants in 2 patient groups

ACT Guide Lite

Experimental group

Description:

Those randomly assigned to the ACT condition after completing baseline assessment will be automatically directed to the registration for ACT Guide Lite. Participants in the ACT condition will be asked to complete the intervention at that time, but they will have the option to take a break before starting. If an ACT participant does not complete the intervention, they will be prompted to login by a research assistant.

Treatment:

Behavioral: ACT Guide Lite

Waitlist control

No Intervention group

Description:

Participants assigned to the waitlist condition will be asked to simply wait to complete the scheduled 1-week and 1-month follow up assessments before accessing the intervention. After they complete the 1-month follow up assessment we will direct participants in the waitlist to access ACT Guide Lite, but at that point their participation in the study will be complete and we will not analyze their use of or responses to the program as part of the study aims.