Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Research Protocols
Date Submitted: Jan 20, 2025
Date Accepted: Jun 2, 2025
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited.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.
Online peer support in long-term conditions: Protocol for a feasibility randomised controlled trial
ABSTRACT
Background:
Over 30% of people in the United Kingdom are living with a long-term physical health condition. Early preventative peer support interventions could improve the lives and psychosocial wellbeing of people with long-term physical health conditions and reduce progression of any symptoms of low mood to more significant depression. In partnership with people with long-term conditions and industry partners, we have co-designed an online peer support platform, CommonGround, to help people with long-term health conditions to connect, support others, share experiences, and receive evidence-based information and advice on self-management.
Objective:
This feasibility randomised controlled trial will investigate whether the CommonGround platform is usable and acceptable for people with long-term physical health conditions experiencing mild depressive symptoms and whether conducting a future, larger confirmatory randomised controlled trial is feasible.
Methods:
A mixed method, two-arm, parallel-group, unblinded randomised controlled feasibility trial will be conducted nationally across the United Kingdom. Participants will include 150 adults (aged ≥18) who have access to the internet and are living with at least one long-term physical health condition and subthreshold depression (scoring 5-9 on the Patient Health Questionnaire-8). Following baseline assessments, eligible participants will be randomised to a co-produced online peer support and psychoeducation platform or a control condition where participants will receive fortnightly emails containing links to the National Health Service mental health webpages. Assessment measures will be collected at baseline, mid-intervention (6 weeks) and post-intervention (12 weeks). A purposive sample of ~40 participants will be interviewed post-intervention to evaluate participant experiences and views on acceptability. The primary feasibility outcome is the number of participants recruited to the trial per week and in total via each recruitment route (as self-reported by participants).
Results:
Recruitment for the feasibility trial began on 12th February 2024. Quantitative data collection was completed by 23rd October 2024, and qualitative data by 3rd December 2024.
Conclusions:
This trial will explore the acceptability and feasibility of our co-produced online peer support platform with embedded psychoeducational resources targeted for people living with long-term physical health conditions and subthreshold depression who are at risk of developing major depressive disorder. The findings will inform the future design of a larger randomised controlled trial exploring the platform’s clinical efficacy and cost-effectiveness. Clinical Trial: ClinicalTrials.gov: NCT06222346
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