Mental Health App and Impact on Wellbeing

The Pennsylvania State University (PENNSTATE)

Status: Not yet enrolling

Conditions: Well-Being, Psychological

Treatments: Behavioral: mental health app

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT07331922

STUDY00024830

Details and patient eligibility

About

The goal of this clinical trial is to learn if intervention with Landing Place mental health app can support wellness in college students. The main questions it aims to answer are:

Can the app increased well-being in college students? Will the app have increased use and usability by the college students? Researchers will compare two groups of participants to see if the app intervention will increase wellbeing and app usability rates.

Participants will randomly assigned into group 1 and 2. Group 1 will not use the app at all. Group 2 will use the app almost every day for 4 weeks.

Full description

Mental health concerns across the United States have increased substantially, affecting individuals across age groups, geographic regions, and socioeconomic backgrounds. Emerging adults demonstrate the highest prevalence of mental health conditions among adult populations, while simultaneously exhibiting the lowest rates of treatment utilization. Barriers to treatment for this population include limited affordability, accessibility, availability, and acceptability of mental health services.

Digital mental health interventions have demonstrated effectiveness across a range of outcomes, including symptom reduction, self-management, and well-being enhancement. Smartphone-based applications, in particular, have been evaluated as tools to integrate mental health support through scalable and accessible technologies. Such applications may offer features including guided self-help activities, mindfulness practices, journaling, mood tracking, psychoeducational content, and location-based resources for mental health services.

Following the COVID-19 pandemic, mental health challenges among U.S. college students have intensified, with documented impacts on academic performance and overall functioning. These challenges are further exacerbated by stigma, financial constraints, and limited access to campus-based or community mental health services, particularly for students from historically marginalized backgrounds.

In response to these needs, Penn State Behrend's Virtual/Augmented Reality (VAR) Lab developed the Landing Place mental health app, a free digital intervention designed to support mental wellness among college students in the Erie region. The application was developed with an emphasis on usability, privacy, and accessibility, and is tailored to the developmental and contextual needs of young adults. Planned future iterations of the application aim to extend its use to additional populations, such as survivors of domestic violence.

The Landing Place app incorporates artificial intelligence, supported features and evidence-based therapeutic components, including mindfulness exercises, goal-setting activities, journaling, mood tracking, and educational content related to mental health and coping strategies. This clinical trial evaluates the effectiveness, usability, and acceptability of the application when used as a self-guided mental wellness intervention among college students.

The study examines multiple forms of data, including behavioral change measures, user engagement metrics, usability assessments, and participant feedback, to assess the app's utility in supporting well-being. It is hypothesized that participants who use the application will demonstrate increased well-being compared to a control group, along with higher engagement and acceptability of the app-based intervention modality.

Enrollment: 160 estimated patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18+ years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Penn State Behrend students
• Over the age of 18
• Must have an iPhone

Exclusion criteria

• People outside of Penn State
• Minors
• People currently in therapy

Trial design

Primary purpose: Supportive Care

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: Single Blind

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160 participants in 2 patient groups

Control Group

No Intervention group

Description:

Group 1 will not use the app at all.

App-intervention group

Experimental group

Description:

Group 2 will use the mental health app almost every day for 4 weeks. The following activities must be completed in-app by participants in this arm: * Cognitive exercise (2 per week) * Mindfulness (2 per week) * Mood tracker (4 per week) * Chat feature (2 per week) * Articles (3 across the 4 weeks) * Journal (3 across the 4 weeks) * To-do (related to the goal, once a week) * Goals (1 goal at the beginning)

Treatment:

Behavioral: mental health app