StriveWeekly Online Mental Health Trial Post-pandemic

Summary

With the COVID-19 pandemic completely altering the landscape of higher education, students have been experiencing more stress than ever. With Harvard University's plan for students to return to campus for the 2021-2022 academic year, offering an online mental health program such as StriveWeekly could provide students with stress management support as they transition back after 1.5 years of remote learning. This study will use a randomized controlled trial design to test the effectiveness of a waitlist versus StriveWeekly. This study will allow us to test if a program that has previously demonstrated effectiveness with university students in reducing anxiety and depression symptoms will still be effective after the unprecedented amount of stressors during a global pandemic.

Primary aim: We aim to evaluate the effectiveness of StriveWeekly in preventing or reducing symptoms of anxiety and depression. The use of a waitlist condition will allow us to experimentally assess if the online intervention is responsible for decreasing / preventing worsened anxiety, depression, and stress symptoms over time. Given the previously established effectiveness of StriveWeekly as an indicated prevention program, we expect students in the intervention condition to experience significantly better symptoms compared to the waitlist from baseline to posttest. Alternatively, if the transition back from remote learning and/or the broad pandemic context interferes with the acceptability or effectiveness of StriveWeekly, then we might expect to see little to no significant differences between the online intervention condition and waitlist condition from baseline to posttest.

Secondary aims include: (a) testing moderators of intervention effectiveness and (b) evaluating the intervention in terms of acceptability (e.g., feedback on program name; demographically representativeness of student user sample; satisfactory adherence and satisfaction rates). Exploratory moderation analyses across groups will help determine whether or not the intervention condition produces unique or additive effects for students with certain characteristics over and above changes demonstrated by similar students in the waitlist condition. Acceptability analyses will allow for more nuanced evaluation of StriveWeekly's effectiveness as a program, beyond its ability to facilitate symptom reduction.

Conditions

• Anxiety
• Depressive Symptoms
• Stress, Emotional

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

StriveWeekly

The intervention (app.striveweekly.com) delivers content via independent modules. Principles covered in content modules: Psychoeducation; Self-monitoring; Values-based goal-setting; Behavioral activation; Cognitive restructuring; Sleep hygiene; Time management; Interpersonal avoidance exposures; Physical exercise; Mindfulness; Relaxation strategies; Maintenance planning. Modules get released week-by-week, and participants are self-guided through content. To facilitate skills practice, every module is accompanied by: a weekly intro email and reminder emails; an "extras" section for tips/suggestions; and a weekly prize drawing. The "Dashboard" section of the intervention displays user progress, including self-rating graphs and a history log of skills practice. The "Campus" section of this dashboard provided: campus-specific announcements; referrals to relevant campus wellness resources; and an anonymous livestream of all campus users' activity.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Harvard University

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Katie McLaughlin, PhD · Harvard University

• Leslie Rith-Najarian, PhD · Strive Weekly Inc

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

PREVENTION

Masking

NONE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

16 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2021-05-19

Primary Completion

2022-04-18

Completion

2022-06-10

Countries

• United States

Study Locations