JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a global mental health crisis highlighting the need for a focus on community-wide mental health. Emotional CPR (eCPR) is a peer-delivered program that was developed by peer support specialists to train community members from diverse backgrounds to support others through mental health crises. eCPR trainers found that eCPR may promote feelings of belonging by increasing supportive behaviors toward individuals with mental health problems. Thus, clinical outcomes related to positive and negative affect would improve along with feelings of loneliness.

Objective:

This study examined the feasibility and preliminary effectiveness of eCPR.

Methods:

We employed a pre-post design with 151 individuals, including peer support specialists, service users, clinicians, family members, and non-profit leaders, who participated in eCPR trainings between April 20, 2020 and July 31, 2020. Instruments were administered pre-training and post-training, including Herth Hope Scale, Empowerment Scale, the Flourishing Scale (perceived capacity to support individuals), the Mindful Attention Awareness Scale, Active-Empathic Listening Scale (supportive behaviors toward individuals with mental health challenges), the Social Connectedness Scale (feelings of belonging/connection with others), the Positive and Negative Affect Scale, and UCLA 3-item loneliness (symptoms/emotions). The eCPR fidelity scale was used to determine feasibility of delivering eCPR with fidelity. We conducted paired t-test to examine post-training improvements related to each scale. Additionally, data was stratified to identify pre-and post-differences by role.

Results:

Findings indicate it is feasible for people with a lived experience to deliver eCPR with fidelity. Statistically significant pre-and post-changes were found related to one’s ability to identify emotions, support others in distress, communicate non-verbally, share emotions, take care of oneself, feelings of social connectedness, self-perceived flourishing, and positive affect (P ≤ .05). Findings indicated promising evidence of pre- and post-improvements (not statistically significant) related to loneliness, empowerment, active empathetic listening, mindfulness awareness, and hope. Non-profit leaders and workers demonstrated the greatest improvements related to loneliness, social connectedness, empathic listening, and flourishing. Peer support specialists demonstrated the greatest improvements related to positive affect and clinicians demonstrated the greatest improvements related to mindfulness awareness.

Conclusions:

Promising evidence indicates eCPR, a peer-developed and delivered program, may increase feelings of belongingness while increasing supportive behaviors toward individuals with mental health problems and clinical outcomes related to positive and negative affect and feelings of loneliness.