Guided Self-help for Common Mental Disorders (DWM)

Indiana University

Status: Completed

Conditions: Bibliotherapy

Treatments: Behavioral: Doing What Matters in Times of Stress: An Illustrated Guide

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other; NIH

Identifiers

NCT04870099

KL2TR002530 (U.S. NIH Grant/Contract)

2004321422

UL1TR002529 (U.S. NIH Grant/Contract)

Details and patient eligibility

About

Common mental disorders (CMDs) like depression and anxiety account for a large proportion of disability worldwide. Access to effective treatments like cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) is limited and has not reduced the public health burden of psychopathology. For patients with mild-moderate CMDs, lower-intensity treatments like guided self-help CBT (GSH-CBT) are effective and more scalable (e.g., via the internet). The advent of social media has opened avenues for dissemination of GSH-CBTs and allows for passive sensing of mood, thinking, behavior, and social networks. We propose to leverage a social media platform used by over a fifth of the United States (Twitter) as a recruitment tool to virtually screen over 150 individuals, recruit N=60 to a 5-week course of GSH-CBT, and extract social media data from individuals engaged in GSH-CBT. Sociodemographic and social media data will be used to predict engagement, outcomes, and processes in GSH-CBT.

Enrollment: 141 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18+ years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• At least mild distress: K6 score ≥ 6
• Having reasonably regular access to the internet or a telephone

Exclusion criteria

• Suicidality: Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ9) item 9 ("thoughts that you would be better off dead, or of hurting yourself ") ≥ 2 ("more than half the days")

Trial design

Primary purpose: Treatment

Allocation: N/A

Interventional model: Single Group Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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141 participants in 1 patient group

Guided self-help

Experimental group

Description:

Participants are given access to the World Health Organization's (WHO) "Doing what matters in times of stress: An illustrated guide" (https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240003927) virtually (i.e., as a pdf) and/or in print. Each participant is assigned an "eCoach" -- an undergraduate, post-baccalaureate, or graduate research assistant -- who will meet with the participant for a 60-minute welcome call describing the intervention and 3-6 sessions of guidance focused on promoting adherence to the manual and using skills in everyday life.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Doing What Matters in Times of Stress: An Illustrated Guide