Impact of an Online Positive Affect Journaling Intervention

Penn State Health

Status: Completed

Conditions: Stress

Treatments: Behavioral: Positive Affect Journaling

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT01873599

41160EP

Details and patient eligibility

About

In this study the investigators plan to recruit 70 patients reporting high levels of stress to test the impact of Positive Affect Journaling. Patients randomized to use the online intervention will be asked to journal about one of seven topics, several days each week, for three months. The topics (e.g., "What went well") are designed to help the individual focus on some positive aspect of their life or themselves over the past day. Each topic is based on prompts shown to be effective in studies of up to one week in duration. In the summer of 2012, our research team pilot tested each prompt with 20 patients with high levels of anxiety, which led to important changes to the prompts, to increase their potential impact. The main aim is to understand the impact of Positive Affect Journaling on psychological distress, as measured by the National Health Interview Survey.

Enrollment: 70 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 21 to 80 years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Fluently speaks, writes, and read English
• Report elevated levels of stress
• Be between 21-80 years of age
• Have access to the Internet
• Have an ECOG Performance Status of 0 (Fully active) through 3 (Limited self-care)

Exclusion criteria

• High risk for suicidality on the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM Disorders (SCID).
• Pregnant or planning to get pregnant in the next 3 months
• Moving in the next 6 months

Trial design

Primary purpose: Treatment

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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70 participants in 2 patient groups

Intervention

Experimental group

Description:

Participants in the intervention condition will be asked to write for 15 minutes on three days each week to one of the seven positive affect writing prompts on www.stressvax.com. Subjects who do not complete a journal entry within 7 days will receive an email reminder, in case they have lost their password or have some technical problem accessing the site.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Positive Affect Journaling

Control

No Intervention group

Description:

As there is no clinical standard of care treatment for psychological distress, patients randomized into this condition will receive their usual care. At the end of three months, subjects in this condition will be given access to the positive affect journaling intervention.