JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

While it is well known that adolescents frequently turn to their friends for support around mental health and substance use problems, there are currently no evidence-based digital programs to support them to do this.

Objective:

To evaluate the efficacy of the Mind your Mate program, a digital peer support program, in improving mental health symptoms, reducing the uptake of substance use, and increasing help-seeking. The Mind your Mate program consists of an online 40-minute classroom lesson and a companion smartphone mobile application (app). The active control group received school-based health education as usual.

Methods:

A cluster randomized controlled trial (RCT) was conducted with 12 secondary schools and 166 students (mean age=15.3 years, SD=0.41, 46% female, 80% born in Australia). Participants completed self-reported questionnaires assessing symptoms of mental health (depression, anxiety, and psychological distress), substance use (alcohol and other drug use) and help-seeking measures at baseline, 6- and 12-month follow-up.

Results:

Students who received the Mind your Mate program had greater reductions in depressive symptoms over a 12-month period, compared to controls (b=-1.86, 95% CI=-3.73 – 0.02, d=-0.31). Anxiety symptoms decreased among students in the intervention group; however, these reductions did not meet statistical significance thresholds. No differences were observed in relation to psychological distress or help-seeking.

Conclusions:

Small to moderate reductions in depression symptoms were observed among students allocated to receive the Mind your Mate intervention. While the current results are encouraging there is a need to continue to refine, develop and evaluate innovative applied approaches to the prevention of mental disorders in real-world settings. Clinical Trial: The study was approved by the University of Sydney Human Research Ethics Committee, Australia (project number: 2020/054), and prospectively registered on the Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry (#ACTRN12620000753954). Access to schools was granted by the New South Wales (NSW) Department of Education and Communities State Education Research Applications Process (2020130).