Self-help App and Wellbeing

NCT ID: NCT04911803

Last Updated: 2022-07-26

Basic Information

• Recruitment Status: COMPLETED
• Clinical Phase: NA
• Total Enrollment: 492 participants
• Study Classification: INTERVENTIONAL
• Study Start Date: 2021-06-08
• Study Completion Date: 2022-04-08

Brief Summary

Anxiety and worry are amongst the most common mental health difficulties. The Second Mental Health Study found a significant increase in the lifetime prevalence for GAD, from 0.9% to 1.6%. In addition, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development found that among Singaporean students, 86% experienced anxiety levels that were significantly higher than the OECD average.

Past research revealed that individuals who worried more experienced decreases in life satisfaction. It was also found that worry and anxiety are significant predictors of one's psychological wellbeing .

In line with this trend, the market for wellbeing apps have been one of the fastest growing categories of apps ever since; with more than 10,000 on the market. Studies have shown that the use of wellbeing apps has been correlated with an improvement in mental wellbeing. However, due to the lack of research that focuses on disorder-specific evidence, there still exists debates around the effectiveness of wellbeing apps on anxiety and worry. In addition, the lack of research on the mediating factor of psychological mindedness in the relationship between the use of wellbeing apps and mental well-being, could be pivotal to the effectiveness of wellbeing apps.

To show the effectiveness of evidence-based wellbeing apps in targeting anxiety and worry, this study will employ the engagement of participants with a wellbeing app for a controlled period of 2 weeks before recording their mental wellbeing outcomes.This paradigm has been replicated extensively through multiple studies.

This study will use a between-groups experimental study design whereby participants will be block randomised into 2 conditions: Active control condition, and Anxiety condition. Each condition will be given a restricted version of the wellbeing app according to their treatment groups. Follow-up data will be collected at 2-weeks post intervention to establish efficacy of the intervention.

Objective 1: To evaluate the effectiveness of a wellbeing app self-help programme for reducing anxiety and worry.

Objective 2: To examine if psychological mindedness moderates hypothesised effects of wellbeing app usage and anxiety and worry.

Hypothesis 1: Participants in the intervention group will report significantly lower anxiety and worry than participants in the control group.

Hypothesis 2: Psychological mindedness will moderate the effect of the wellbeing app's self-help programme on anxiety and worry: Participants high in psychological mindedness will benefit more from the wellbeing apps than those with lower scores on psychological mindedness.

Conditions

Anxiety and Worry

Study Design

• Allocation Method: RANDOMIZED
• Intervention Model: PARALLEL
• Primary Study Purpose: SUPPORTIVE_CARE
• Blinding Strategy: TRIPLE

Study Groups

Anxiety Group

Participants will download the anxiety application to their own handphones, and will complete the programme subsequently in their own time over the course of 2 weeks. The expected duration participants will spend on the anxiety application daily is estimated to be around 5 to 10 minutes, amounting to a total of around 140 minutes (2 hours and 10 minutes) during the 2 weeks intervention. Participants in the anxiety group are asked to complete daily brief exercises. For example, they will practice noticing worry thoughts and journal them down.

Group Type: EXPERIMENTAL

Anxiety Application

Intervention Type: BEHAVIORAL

The Intellect mobile app (containing the anxiety application) can be freely downloaded from the App store and Google Play store for free. The app provides access to the different programmes. The mobile app has been pilot tested by Intellect before the release on the App and Google Play store. However, for this research project Intellect is going to provide the the programmes as stand alone applications exclusively for the participants of this research.

Procrastination Group

Participants will download the procrastination application to their own handphones, and will complete the programme subsequently in their own time over the course of 2 weeks. The expected duration participants will spend on the procrastination application daily is estimated to be around 5 to 10 minutes, amounting to a total of around 140 minutes (2 hours and 10 minutes) during the 2 weeks intervention. Participants in the procrastination group are asked to complete daily brief exercises. For example, they will practice to reduce procrastination-related thoughts.

Group Type: ACTIVE_COMPARATOR

Procrastination Application

Intervention Type: BEHAVIORAL

The Intellect mobile app (containing the procrastination application) can be freely downloaded from the App store and Google Play store for free. The app provides access to the different programmes. The mobile app has been pilot tested by Intellect before the release on the App and Google Play store. However, for this research project Intellect is going to provide the the programmes as stand alone applications exclusively for the participants of this research.

Interventions

Anxiety Application

The Intellect mobile app (containing the anxiety application) can be freely downloaded from the App store and Google Play store for free. The app provides access to the different programmes. The mobile app has been pilot tested by Intellect before the release on the App and Google Play store. However, for this research project Intellect is going to provide the the programmes as stand alone applications exclusively for the participants of this research.

Intervention Type: BEHAVIORAL

Procrastination Application

The Intellect mobile app (containing the procrastination application) can be freely downloaded from the App store and Google Play store for free. The app provides access to the different programmes. The mobile app has been pilot tested by Intellect before the release on the App and Google Play store. However, for this research project Intellect is going to provide the the programmes as stand alone applications exclusively for the participants of this research.

Intervention Type: BEHAVIORAL

Eligibility Criteria

Inclusion Criteria

• At least 18 years old for NUS students, or 21 for non NUS students

Exclusion Criteria

• Participants who do not meet the age requirement

• Minimum Eligible Age: 18 Years
• Eligible Sex: ALL
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: No

Sponsors

The Intellect Company

UNKNOWN

Sponsor Role: collaborator

VTan

OTHER

Sponsor Role: lead

Responsible Party

VTan

Co-Investigator

Responsibility Role: SPONSOR_INVESTIGATOR

Principal Investigators

Oliver Suendermann

Role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR

National University of Singapore

Locations

National University of Singapore

Singapore, , Singapore

Countries

Singapore

Other Identifiers

NUS-IRB-2021-266

Identifier Type: -

Identifier Source: org_study_id