An interventional study of Gratitude Intervention App in Depression, Anxiety and Stress, sponsored by Dalhousie University. Completed at 1 site in Canada. Open to participants aged 18 Years to 30 Years, including healthy volunteers. Per ClinicalTrials.gov, last updated 2024-10-01.
Sponsored by Dalhousie University · Not applicable, Interventional, and Treatment
The goal of this clinical trial is to examine whether a newly developed gratitude intervention app can effectively improve psychological functioning, as measured by depression, anxiety, and stress symptoms, positive and negative affect
The main questions it aims to answer are:
1. Will people who are in the intervention group feel more positive emotions and experience fewer negative emotions such as stress, anxiety, and depression after three weeks?
Researchers will compare the intervention to a control group (a group not given the gratitude intervention) to see if the intervention works to improve psychological functioning.
Participants will:
Background: Gratitude interventions have been shown to decrease depression, stress and anxiety symptoms, support enhanced coping with health-related problems and might improve both psychological and physical functioning in areas. However, results have been mixed with effects varying by outcome, duration, follow-up length, format, and age. A recent meta-analysis including 27 studies focusing more specifically on symptoms of depression and anxiety suggest there is a limited effect of gratitude interventions on reducing symptoms of depression and anxiety at post-intervention and follow-up.
Objective: Thus, the present study aims to implement a three-week gratitude intervention including five different types of gratitude tasks embedded in a mobile sensing application and examine the intervention's psychological effects.
Method: Participants will be recruited and randomly allocated into the intervention and the control group. The study will measure depression, anxiety and stress symptoms, positive and negative affect, negative affectivity and social inhibition before and after the three-week intervention period as psychological variables. It will analyze the effect of the gratitude intervention on the measured variables as well as examine the impact of negative affectivity and social inhibition on depression, anxiety and stress symptoms.
Implications: If the intervention is shown to effectively reduce psychological problems, it will be tested and implemented to support the well-being of university students as a stand-alone tool.
The study will examine whether the gratitude intervention can effectively reduce depression, anxiety and stress symptoms. We intend to recruit 120 participants. Extending previous research, it will also examine whether negative affectivity and social inhibition have an impact on the measured outcomes and whether the intervention can influence these traits.
It is hypothesized that:
8,245 studies on the registry are indexed under Depression; 1,641 are open to participants now.
This study's enrollment of 157 is above the median of 84 across 6,869 interventional studies indexed under Depression.
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Exclusion Criteria:
The intervention group used the Gratitude Intervention App (GIA), and the Predicting Risk and Outcomes of Social InTerActions (PROSIT) app, which is a mobile sensing app.
Behavioral: Gratitude Intervention App
Participants in the control group downloaded and used only the PROSIT app, they did not use the Gratitude Intervention App (GIA).
The GIA app, an iOS application designed for this study, is based on effective gratitude interventions and tailored for youth. Access required a unique login. It features five exercises: a journal, photo book, imagine exercise, speech exercise, and meditation. The journal encourages daily entries. The photo book involves uploading photos of things users are grateful for, promoting mindfulness. The imagine exercise reflects on gratitude, while the speech exercise records users' gratitude. The meditation exercise enhances well-being. During the three-week study, daily notifications prompted exercise completion. The app, green and white with a flower-heart icon, offers email support for technical issues.
Also known as: GIA
Depression, anxiety, and stress
Participant's depression, anxiety, and stress levels were measured with the Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale (DASS-21), which is a set of three self-report scales each consisting of seven items to measure the individual's emotional states of depression ("I couldn't seem to experience any positive feeling at all"), anxiety ("I felt I was close to panic"), and stress ("I found it difficult to relax"). Participants rated how much each statement applied to them in the past week, from 0 ("Did not apply to me at all") to 3 ("Applied to me very much or most of the time"). High scores indicate higher levels of symptoms of anxiety, depression, and stress. There are subscale score cut-offs for normal, mild, moderate, severe, and extremely severe emotional states. Participants were considered to show at least moderate symptomatology if they scored higher than 7 on the depression subscale, 6 on the anxiety subscale, and 10 on the stress subscale.
Time frame: three weeks
Plan to share: No — Participant data will be made available upon reasonable request to Dr. Sandra Meier (PI).
This study is completed, as verified in Sep 2024. You cannot join it, but the record below documents what was studied.
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Dalhousie University