JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

There is a lack of studies on internet interventions in inpatient settings. This is especially true for studies in acute psychiatric inpatient care. Internet interventions in this specific setting may provide benefits, such as patient empowerment and overall improved treatment outcome. However, there may also be specific barriers to their implementation, which are unique due to the complexity of acute psychiatric inpatient care.

Objective:

The aim of this study is to examine the feasibility and preliminary evidence for effectiveness of an internet-based emotion regulation intervention provided as an add-on to acute psychiatric inpatient care.

Methods:

The goal is to randomly allocate 60 patients with a range of different diagnoses in a 1:1 ratio to either treatment as usual (TAU), which consists of acute psychiatric inpatient treatment, or to the intervention group consisting of TAU + access to an internet intervention that focuses on reduction of emotion regulation difficulties and improvement of emotion regulation skills. The primary outcome is symptom severity assessed with the Brief Symptom Inventory at baseline, after four weeks, after eight weeks and at hospital discharge. Secondary outcomes include two emotion regulation parameters, intervention usage, usability, patient satisfaction, and reasons for patient loss to follow-up.

Results:

Participant recruitment started in August 2021 and as of March 2023, is ongoing. First publication of study results is expected in 2024.

Conclusions:

This study protocol describes a study that intends to examine an internet-based emotion regulation intervention in acute psychiatric inpatient care. The study will inform on the feasibility of the intervention and possible effects on symptom severity and emotion regulation. The results will provide new insights on blended treatment, in this case the combination of an internet-based intervention and face-to-face psychiatric treatment, in an understudied patient group and setting. Clinical Trial: The study has been approved by the Ethics Committee of the Canton of Bern, Switzerland (ID 2020-01139). The trial is registered with clinicaltrials.gov (NCT04990674).