Reducing Mental Health Disparities Among Latinxs With a Telenovela Intervention

University of Nevada, Reno

Status: Enrolling

Conditions: Anxiety Disorders

Treatments: Behavioral: Transdiagnostic Telenovela Intervention

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT06163599

1864886-2

Details and patient eligibility

About

The primary aim of our study is to determine the effectiveness of an transdiagnostic telenovela video intervention in reducing anxiety and depressive symptoms using a pre/post-test design with Spanish-speaking Latinxs.

Full description

Telenovela video interventions are a low-resource, low-cost methodology developed to diminish the treatment-provider gap (Heilemann et al., 2017). Research shows that telenovela interventions represent an acceptable (Heilemann et al., 2018) and potent (Heilemann et al., 2017) intervention option for disseminating information to the Latinx population. Prior research utilizing transmedia telenovela interventions that include a telenovela component have demonstrated some effectiveness at reducing symptoms of anxiety and depression among Latinxs (Heilemann et al., 2017; Kajiyama et al., 2018) as have fotonovelas (Sanchez et al., 2019). To date researchers have not investigated how the telenovela approach combined with a transdiagnostic treatment paradigm might help reduce behavioral health disparities among Spanish-speaking Latinxs given that such an intervention would be easily disseminable and target the two most common disorders observed among this population. The primary aim of this study is to determine the effectiveness of an transdiagnostic telenovela video intervention in reducing anxiety and depressive symptoms using a pre/post-test design with Spanish-speaking Latinxs.

Enrollment: 100 estimated patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18+ years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

1. 18 years or older
2. Identify as Latinx
3. Prefer behavioral health services in Spanish
4. Meet the DSM criteria for any mild to moderate anxiety disorder
5. Ownership of a smartphone

Exclusion criteria

1. Suicidality
2. Psychosis
3. Bipolar disorder
4. Severe anxiety disorders
5. Severe depressive disorders
6. Homicidality

Trial design

Primary purpose: Other

Allocation: N/A

Interventional model: Single Group Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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100 participants in 1 patient group

Telenovela Arm

Experimental group

Description:

The UP telenovela (which is the experimental treatment arm) constitutes of nine videos depicting the main character, Esperanza, who is struggling with anxiety and depression, undergoing therapy involving the UP, and completing worksheets relating to the weekly therapy sessions.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Transdiagnostic Telenovela Intervention