Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Mental Health
Date Submitted: Jan 23, 2021
Open Peer Review Period: Jan 23, 2021 - Mar 20, 2021
Date Accepted: Mar 15, 2021
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Online group CBT for symptoms of anxiety and depression among university students: A pragmatic open trial
ABSTRACT
Background:
Both anxiety and depression are common among university students, and university counselling centres are under pressure to develop effective, novel and sustainable interventions that engage and retain students. Group interventions delivered via the internet could be a novel and effective way to promote student mental health.
Objective:
We carried out a pragmatic open trial to investigate uptake, retention, treatment response, and level of satisfaction with a remote group CBT intervention delivered online to university students with symptoms of anxiety or depression during the COVID pandemic
Methods:
Pre- and post-intervention self-report data on anxiety and depression were collected with the GAD-7 and PHQ-9. Satisfaction was assessed post-intervention with the Client Satisfaction with Treatment Questionnaire.
Results:
175 students (86.1% female, mean age=22.4 years) were enrolled, 90.3% (n=158) of whom initiated treatment. Mean (SD) number of sessions attended was 6.4 (2.8) out of 10. Among participants with clinically significant symptoms at baseline, mean symptom scores decreased significantly for anxiety (t56=11.6, P<.001), depression (t61=7.8, P<.001), and composite anxiety/depression (t60=10.7, P<.001), with large effect sizes (d=1.0-1.5). Remission rates among participants with clinically significant baseline symptoms were 67.7-78.9% and were not associated with baseline symptom severity. High overall levels of satisfaction with treatment were reported.
Conclusions:
These results serve as a proof of concept for the use of online group CBT to promote the mental health of university students. Clinical Trial: N/A
Citation
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Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.