Managing Emotion: An Online Approach to Supporting the Mental Health of University Students

Managing Emotion is a brief online psychoeducation program designed to support the psychological and emotional well-being of university students. The psychoeducation content of Managing Emotion draws from the seminal Process Model of Emotion Regulation (Gross, 1998; 2015), which provides an overarching framework for understanding the experience of emotion, and how we can change our emotional states via a number of cognitive and behavioural strategies. Intervention content has been developed by the investigators who are researchers within the School of Psychology, Curtin University, with a demonstrated track record in emotion regulation and related fields. Peer consultation was further sought with clinical psychologists within Western Australia. Managing Emotion consists of four main modules which progressively introduce and discuss strategies for regulating emotion. Psychoeducation content is delivered via a series of short engaging videos, with an accompanying written summary of the video content. At the end of each module, participants are also provided with a module worksheet, which includes some simple take-home activities designed to facilitate processing of the intervention content. These worksheets have been designed to help personalise the intervention content for each participant’s individual life circumstances and concerns. Participants complete the online intervention modules individually, at their own pace, with each module typically requiring between 20 to 30 minutes to complete. The intervention has been designed to be delivered sequentially, as each module builds upon the content of previous modules. Participants are advised of this and encouraged to complete the entire Managing Emotion program (including take-home worksheets) spread over the course of one week, in sequential order with each module completed once. It is noted that although we encourage participants to complete the intervention in the aforementioned way, we have opted to not implement “forced” participant responses. It will be technically possible for participants to either skip modules or worksheets, or to view the modules out of sequence, or to view one module multiple times. We will be collecting basic time-stamped usage statistics in order to assess participant compliance, which in turn will help inform the fidelity of the intervention delivery for future revision. As this is the first evaluation of Managing Emotion, an open-label trial design will be implemented. All participants will receive the active intervention over the course of one week. Questionnaire-based assessment measures will be completed immediately before and after intervention, as well as following the end of each module (see Outcomes section for detailed information). This pilot study will be conducted entirely online.