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AcAdeMiC: Acting With Acceptance, Mindfulness and Compassion to Overcome Test/Exam Anxiety

NCT04861116 · Status: COMPLETED · Phase: NA · Type: INTERVENTIONAL · Enrollment: 64

Last updated 2022-12-02

No results posted yet for this study

Summary

Test Anxiety is a highly prevalent and impairing condition in adolescents (i.e., 9th to 12th grade students), significantly impacting on their mental health and well-being. Among Portuguese university students, test anxiety is the primary reason for seeking specialized psychological support, suggesting the importance of early intervention.

Test anxiety associates to low self-compassion, acceptance and mindfulness, which have been increasingly acknowledged in literature as important processes to cultivate towards human experience and suffering, within intervention programs, particularly in adolescence, and in anxiety and fear of failure in academic settings.

These processes are covered and enhanced within comprehensive models and evidence-based therapies that adopt an integrative, contextual and biopsychosocial approach, such as Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), and Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT), as well as an evolutionary approach, such as Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT). These approaches focus on receiving internal events (e.g., thoughts, emotions, memories) in an accepting and compassionate way, as part of human experience, without changing them, while developing a sense of vitality, well-being and commitment to valued ends in life, instead of focusing solely or mainly on symptom reduction (although it is usually a consequent outcome).

However, there are no empirically validated therapeutic programs for adolescents with test anxiety promoting these processes combined.

ICT-based interventions are accessible, convenient, cost-effective and have been proved effective in reducing anxiety disorders' symptomatology. Even though there are some empirically validated online interventions for test anxiety in adolescents, having shown promising results, these were mainly self-help/module-based programs, without a clinician facilitating the intervention.

This project aims to develop and implement a 12-week ICT-based targeted, facilitated and manualized individual intervention for adolescent students, developing compassion, acceptance and mindfulness, in order to help improve test anxiety's regulation (and consequently symptom reduction), as well as increase general and school-related well-being, while promoting valued life action.

Conditions

  • Adolescents
  • Test Anxiety

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Intervention program for test anxiety

12-week ICT-based manualized, targeted and facilitated individual intervention for adolescent students, that aims to promote compassion, acceptance and mindfulness, in order to help improve test anxiety's regulation (and consequently symptom reduction), as well as increase general and school-related well-being, while promoting valued life action.

Sponsors & Collaborators

  • Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia

    collaborator OTHER

  • University of Coimbra

    lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

  • Cláudia P. Pires, M.Sc. · University of Coimbra

Study Design

Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Purpose
TREATMENT
Masking
NONE
Model
PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age
13 Years
Max Age
18 Years
Sex
ALL
Healthy Volunteers
No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start
2021-03-15
Primary Completion
2022-07-31
Completion
2022-07-31

Countries

  • Portugal

Study Locations

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Read the full study record

This page highlights key information. For complete eligibility criteria, study locations, investigator contacts, and the full protocol, visit the original record on ClinicalTrials.gov.

View NCT04861116 on ClinicalTrials.gov