Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Formative Research
Date Submitted: Oct 18, 2023
Open Peer Review Period: Feb 12, 2024 - Apr 8, 2024
Date Accepted: Aug 13, 2024
(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Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited.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.
Efficacy, user opinion, and usability of a self-applied online intervention with and without chat support for depression and anxiety symptoms during the COVID-19: A Randomized Control Trial
ABSTRACT
Background:
The COVID-19 pandemic has had an impact on mental health worldwide. Low and middle-income countries were largely affected by the consequences of the pandemic. Mexico was one of the most affected countries. Long periods of lockdowns, isolation, social distancing, and mobility restrictions, among others, highlighted the need to introduce online psychological interventions to the Mexican population. In this context, Mental Health COVID-19 emerged as a self-applied online intervention aimed at adults to improve mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Objective:
The COVID-19 pandemic has had an impact on mental health worldwide. Low and middle-income countries were largely affected by the consequences of the pandemic. Mexico was one of the most affected countries. Long periods of lockdowns, isolation, social distancing, and mobility restrictions, among others, highlighted the need to introduce online psychological interventions to the Mexican population. In this context, Mental Health COVID-19 emerged as a self-applied online intervention aimed at adults to improve mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Methods:
A randomized controlled trial was conducted. Data were collected from May 2020 to June 2022, including pretest, posttest, and follow-up measurements of 3 and 6 months.
Results:
Thirty-six participants finished the intervention, 5 were part of the Self-Applied Online Intervention Group (SAOI), and 31 were on the Self-Applied Online Intervention Group+Chat (SAOI+C) intervention, including a chat service with therapists. The intervention was delivered through fifteen videos with a duration between 10 to 20 minutes, plus a PDF with review materials accessible to participants. The perceived high complexity of the system for the SAOI group had a moderating effect associated with a lack of efficacy of the intervention regarding depression, but not when controlled for sociodemographic variables. Perception of lower helpfulness of the intervention was associated with poorer outcomes. Coping strategies did not show moderating effects.
Conclusions:
Relevance of online interventions aimed at reducing clinical symptoms and highlighting the contribution of adding a support chat as a tool to promote treatment adherence and a positive impact on the perception of the usefulness of the intervention. Clinical Trial: NCT04468893, and in the International Registered Report Identifier (IRRID): DERR1-10.2196/23117
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
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.