The effect of Cognitive behaviour therapy on adult mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Intervention group names: Immediate and Waitlist The study will involve providing participants with a low-intensity, self-help CBT guide to coping with anxiety and depression during the COVID-19 pandemic, developed specifically for the current study. This will include information for children (use of parts relating to children will be facilitated by adult participants only), adolescents (use of parts relating to adolescents will be facilitated by adult participants only), and adults (including older adults), and include simplified CBT coping strategies as well as a comprehensive resource list of the many internet-based CBT programs, websites, and self-help books available as e-books to help people recognize and address different types of unhelpful thought patterns and behaviours which may contribute to heightened anxiety and depression during the pandemic. Coping strategies included in the guide include: - Taking action to protect yourself against COVID-19 by following expert guidelines (COVID-19 specific) - Engage in general self-care (non-COVD-19 specific) - Engage in pleasant events (non-COVD-19 specific) - Ways to deal with worry and rumination (non-COVD-19 specific) - Ways to deal with anxiety over your health (non-COVD-19 specific) - Ways to deal with anxiety over your finances (non-COVD-19 specific) - Engage in problem solving (non-COVD-19 specific) - Relaxation Exercises (non-COVD-19 specific) - Mindfulness (non-COVD-19 specific) - Exercise (non-COVD-19 specific) - Challenge unhelpful thoughts with thought records (non-COVD-19 specific) - Challenging unhelpful thoughts with behavioural experiments (non-COVD-19 specific) All participants will be provided with an online information and consent form outlining what will be involved in the trial. Once they have provided consent (by completing the form online), they will complete a form with a set of screening questions to assess their potential suicidality risk. Those who are high-risk will be directed to alternative mental health services (via email) and will be exited from the trial. Those who are low-risk will then go on to complete the pre-intervention questionnaire (online survey), which will include demographics questions, a measure of anxiety (GADS-7) and a measure of depression (PHQ-9). Participants will then be randomised (automatically through the survey software) to one of the two groups. Immediate intervention group: Participants in the Immediate Group will be emailed the CBT self-help guide immediately, and will be directed to spend the next week reading over the information. At the end of one week accessing the guide, they will be emailed an online link to the post-intervention questionnaire. This questionnaire will once again include the GAD-7 and PHQ-9, as well as questions relating to participant's use of and adherence to the strategies presented within the guide (e.g., how many hours spent reading the guide, what percentage of the guide was read, which of the strategies or external resources were used). Waitlist intervention group: Participants in the Waitlist Group will be informed via email that they will be emailed the CBT self-help guide in one week's time. One week after completing the pre-intervention questionnaire, they will be emailed an online link to the post-intervention questionnaire. After completing the post-intervention questionnaire, they will be emailed the CBT self-help guide. All participants who complete the post-intervention questionnaire will be emailed a $20 Amazon voucher. The survey will also include a final question asking if they would like to participate in a feedback interview via phone or internet with one of the research assistants. If they agree to participate in the interview, they will be emailed a link to a second information and consent form explaining what the interview will involve. Once they provide consent, they will then be emailed a link to a bookings website where they will be able to select a time and date for the interview. Once a time is scheduled, one of the research assistants will contact the participant in order to arrange either a phone call or a call over the internet. The research assistants, who are provisionally and generally registered psychologists with experience conducting feedback interviews for research, will conduct the remote interviews from a secure and confidential location. Participants who complete the feedback interviews will be emailed an additional $20 Amazon voucher. Fidelity will be checked using a random selection of the interviews, which will be transcribed, by cross-checking the transcriptions against the list of feedback questions to be covered in the interviews.