None listed
Conditions
Brief summary
Adolescents with type 1 diabetes experience high rates of distress, depression, anxiety, and disordered eating behaviours, compared to their healthy peers. Using a pilot randomised controlled trial, we would like to examine any possible improvements in self-compassion, diabetes-related distress, stress, disordered eating behaviour, diabetes self-care behaviours and glycemic control from using a self-compassion chatbot app, compared to those using a diabetes self-management education app. A target of 74 adolescents (aged 12 to 16) will be recruited from the Starship paediatric diabetes outpatient clinics and online. Once participants have consented/ assented to participate they will complete baseline questionnaires and either be given access to the self-compassion chatbot app or a diabetes self-management education app. The self-compassion chatbot will ask participants how they have been lately and how their diabetes self-management is going before starting conversational lessons on self- compassion and mindfulness tools. After 3 weeks, participants will complete questionnaires and then again 3- months after the intervention. We will also collect participants routine glycaemic control (HbA1c) from their clinical records at baseline, 3- and 6-months. Those who live outside of Auckland will be asked to self-report their glycaemic control (HbA1c) at these timepoints.
Interventions
Intervention condition: The self-compassion chatbot app intervention will consist of 2-weeks of conversational lessons delivered daily. Lessons will take approximately 5 to 10 minutes to complete and include audio meditations, interactive text activities (e.g., self-compassion journaling exercises), and short videos from other adolescents and young adults with T1D explaining common struggles and tools which have helped them. The lessons will cover key mindfulness and self-compassion tools, adapt
Intervention condition: The self-compassion chatbot app intervention will consist of 2-weeks of conversational lessons delivered daily. Lessons will take approximately 5 to 10 minutes to complete and include audio meditations, interactive text activities (e.g., self-compassion journaling exercises), and short videos from other adolescents and young adults with T1D explaining common struggles and tools which have helped them. The lessons will cover key mindfulness and self-compassion tools, adapted from the evidence-based standardised 8-week adolescent MFY self-compassion program (Bluth et al., 2016). To measure the chatbot use, the chatbot app will measure which exercises have been initiated and completed. At 3-weeks participants randomised to the intervention condition and who indicated on the consent form that they would be happy to be contacted to participate in an interview, will be invited to participate in a brief interview either over the phone or on zoom conducted by Anna Boggiss. The interviews will occur on a first-in-first serve basis for at least 10 participants, with increased emphasis on including Maori participants to ensure feedback is given to ensure the chatbot is culturally acceptable.
Sponsors
University of Auckland
Study design
Allocation
Randomised controlled trial
Intervention model
Parallel
Primary purpose
Educational / counselling / training
Masking
Open (masking not used)
Eligibility
Sex/Gender
All
Age
12 Years to 16 Years
Healthy volunteers
No
Inclusion criteria
Adolescents will be eligible for inclusion in the study if they are aged 12 to 16 years, have a diagnosis of type 1 diabetes, and have access to a device that is able to run and support the use of an app.
Exclusion criteria
Exclusion criteria includes: (1) non-English speaking adolescents, (2) children with developmental disorders (e.g. Autism Spectrum Disorder), (3) children diagnosed with a serious mental disorder requiring ongoing treatment (e.g. psychosis, or a diagnosed eating disorder), (4) children with untreated hypothyroidism, and (5) children recently (in previous 48 hours) diagnosed with DKA or severe hypoglycaemia.
Outcome results
None listed