Testing a Self-Management App for Symptoms of Posttraumatic Stress

Palo Alto Veterans Institute for Research

Status: Completed

Conditions: PTSD

Treatments: Behavioral: Renew

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT04155736

52829

Details and patient eligibility

About

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the acceptability and efficacy of a self-guided behavioral health tool delivered by mobile app (called "Renew") for people who are experiencing symptoms of posttraumatic stress. This study also aims to determine the necessity of coaching support over and above support from peers, shedding light on the critical question of level of support resources needed to maintain mHealth app engagement.

Enrollment: 100 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18+ years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Veterans 18 years or older
• own an Android smart phone (as the app is only available for Android)
• self-report having experiencing symptoms of posttraumatic stress (defined as a PCL-5 score of 31 or higher).

Exclusion criteria

• None

Trial design

Primary purpose: Treatment

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: Single Blind

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100 participants in 3 patient groups

Renew with coaching

Experimental group

Description:

Users will be assigned a study staff member as a support person who is notified when the user engages with the app or if they have not engaged for 7 days. Support persons are provided with psychoeducation material including information about how to be an effective support person for the user and direct messaging capacity to respond to app notifications about user engagement (e.g., user earned X points, user achieved a new level).

Treatment:

Behavioral: Renew

Renew without coaching

Active Comparator group

Description:

Same as "Renew with coaching" except that the users will not be assigned a study staff member as a support person.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Renew

Wait list

No Intervention group

Description:

No intervention is provided