Previously submitted to: JMIR Mental Health (no longer under consideration since Jul 16, 2021)
Date Submitted: Apr 9, 2021
Open Peer Review Period: Apr 9, 2021 - Jun 4, 2021
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Mental health effects of an online self-help intervention for university students during COVID-19: a non-randomized controlled pilot study
ABSTRACT
Background:
The COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting abrupt changes in daily life and ways of learning has had a significant impact on university students, especially on their mental health. However, little is known on how to prevent and/or reduce its impact to date. Prior to COVID, some studies have shown that online stress management programs were successful enough to improve students' mental health and stress adjustment strategies, suggesting that these interventions should be further developed during the pandemic.
Objective:
Our study explored the effects of an online self-help program which targeted stress management and learning.
Methods:
A non-randomized controlled study was initially conducted with 204 university students. Our final sample is composed of 67 participants distributed in two groups, the intervention group (participants who took part to the full program) and the control group (participants who did not take part in the program). The variables measured were: anxiety and depressive symptoms (HADS), academic burnout (MBI-SS), learned helplessness (LHQ), and coping strategies (Brief-COPE). Measurements were performed at the baseline (T0) and at 8 weeks (T1) after the baseline.
Results:
Means comparisons between T0 and T1 show in the intervention group a reduction in anxiety symptoms (d = .67), use of substance to cope with stress (d = .93) and learned helplessness (d = .53), which is not observed in the control group.
Conclusions:
Our pilot study reports promising effects of our online self-help program combining stress and learning on students' psychological state. In the future, further research effort will be needed to confirm the beneficial effect of this type of program on university students.
Citation
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