Optimising an Online Self-help Program for Coping With the Loss of a Spouse

Summary

When someone has lost his or her partner, feelings of grief are normal and usually diminish over time. However, for some people, strong feelings of grief persist. For coping with grief, it is important to learn to accept the loss, experience the pain of grief, adjust to an environment without the deceased person, and withdraw emotional energy and focus it on other relationships. Loss-oriented tasks, such as grief work, and restoration-oriented tasks, such as attending to life changes, engaging in new activities and finding new roles and identities, are both essential.

The program is designed to be completed in 10 weeks and recommends that mourners complete one module or topic a week. To examine the benefits of SOLENA, this study will compare the answers of mourners that completed the intervention with the mourners of the control group, which will wait to complete the intervention. The group that completed the intervention is divided in two sub-groups. One group of mourners will complete the intervention in a fixed order, while the other will complete it in a self-tailored order according to their own needs at each moment. Specifically, the study examines how well the self-help program reduces grief, depression symptoms, and loneliness and examines whether the topics of the study modules are presented in a given order or whether participants can work on the topics according to their current needs makes a difference. Ultimately, it is expected that the self-tailored version leads to more benefits than completing SOLENA's modules in a fixed order.

Conditions

• Grief

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

SOLENA - Online self-help program for older adults who lost the partner

SOLENA follows the most relevant CBT elements of interventions for prolonged grief: 1) Exposure, e.g., telling the story of the loss; 2) cognitive reappraisal or restructuring of individual dysfunctional thoughts associated with the loss; 3) integration and restoration including self-care and social reengagement; and 4) behavioural activation. SOLENA's content is provided through a conversational virtual agent, Sol, who guides the user through the Study section the CBT intervention itself. In 10 study modules that address either the acceptance of the loss or the restoration and adaptation to a new life, SOLENA includes 1) readings, i.e., texts based about grief related topics that provide the background and rational for the module; and 2) exercises to encourage mourners to actively reflect on their grief and apply their new knowledge to their daily life and to practise the new routines regularly. SOLENA also provides users with the Notebook, Activities, and My Support sections.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• University of Bern

  collaborator OTHER

• Jeannette Brodbeck

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Jeannette Brodbeck, PhD · University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

SUPPORTIVE_CARE

Masking

NONE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

18 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2022-04-04

Primary Completion

2025-12-17

Completion

2025-12-18

Countries

• Switzerland

Study Locations