Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Formative Research
Date Submitted: Jun 30, 2022
Date Accepted: Mar 7, 2023
Sensa mobile application for managing stress, anxiety, and depression symptoms: a pilot study
ABSTRACT
Background:
A massive, five- to eightfold increase in depression, anxiety, and stress symptoms in the U.S., attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic, has been reported. If not treated, it may negatively affect a person's everyday life by alternating physical and social wellbeing and productivity and increasing the expenditure on healthcare. Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT)-based interventions are gaining popularity as a means to reduce stress and alleviate anxiety and depression symptoms. Moreover, CBT delivered through a mobile application has the same elements of traditional CBT training (guided discovery, for example), but, unlike conventional training, users of mobile applications are allowed to tailor their own experience at their own speed and schedule.
Objective:
To determine the efficacy of the Sensa mobile application and explore the dose–duration effect by trying to find the optimal usage time for an intervention to be effective.
Methods:
The study cohort comprised 381 consecutive users who started using Sensa between October 2021 and March 2022. All users included in the study took the Depression Anxiety Stress Scale-21 (DASS-21) assessment at least two times. Other parameters that were obtained from the database containing all self-reported data were gender, number of active days (AD), total time of use (TT) and age. The primary outcome of the study was change in DASS-21 score. Statistical analyses were performed using GraphPad Prism, version 9 (GraphPad Software, San Diego, CA., USA). In addition, a logistic-regression model was created to predict how obtained independent parameters influenced the DAS-21 score.
Results:
The main finding of our study was that the majority of participants who started using Sensa were experiencing depression, anxiety, and stress symptoms (92.13%, 80.05%, and 87.93%, respectively). However, there was a statistically significant decrease of DASS-21 subdomain scores after the use of the application (Anxiety: 7.25 ± 4.03 vs 6.12 ± 4.00; Depression: 11.05 ± 4.26 vs 9.01 ± 4.77; Stress: 11.42 ± 3.44 vs 9.96 ± 3.65; p < 0.05). Finally, the logistic regression model showed that users who were using the application for more than 24 days and had at least 12 active days during that time had 3.463 (95% CI [1.142–11.93]) and 2.644 (95% CI [1.024–7.127]) times higher chances to reduce their DASS-21 subdomain scores of depression and anxiety.
Conclusions:
Usage of Sensa mobile application managed to mitigated the depression, anxiety and stress symptoms. Clinical Trial: This retrospective chart review study was approved by BRANY IRB in June 2022 (registration ID.: 22-08-438-939).
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