None listed
Conditions
Brief summary
The present study seeks to evaluate a brief online intervention, Managing Emotion, which has been developed by the present investigators for the purpose of supporting the psychological and emotional well-being of university students. Participants will be recruited for the trial through the Curtin Wellbeing Survey, a mental health screening and stepped referral care program offered to all first year students at Curtin University in Western Australia. Students identified as being at low suicide risk will be invited to participate in the Managing Emotion RCT (Students at moderate to high risk suicide risk receive safety planning or personalised referral options, and are excluded from invitation to the Managing Emotion RCT). Participants will be randomly assigned to either the Managing Emotion intervention or treatment as usual (provision of list of general mental health resources). The intervention content seeks to increase understanding of the relationship between thoughts, emotions, and behaviour, and discusses a number of evidence-based strategies for managing one’s emotions, particularly during times of stress. The intervention content is divided into five self-paced modules, to be completed over the course of one week. Each module includes a number of brief engaging videos, light reading material, and take-home activities. A set of questionnaire measures will be administered immediately before and after completion of the Managing Emotion program, and at 1 month follow-up, to provide an evaluation of the efficacy, acceptability and feasibility of this intervention. We predict that completion of the Managing Emotion program will be associated with an increase in participants' ability to regulate their own emotions, an increase in participants' perceived self-efficacy and resilience, reductions in reported depressed mood, anxiety and stress, and their overall adaptation to university.
Interventions
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 five online 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. For this study, participants will be randomly assigned to either receive the Managing Emotion intervention or treatment as usual (i.e. provided with a list of general mental health resources).
Sponsors
Prof. Penelope Hasking
Study design
Allocation
Randomised controlled trial
Intervention model
Parallel
Primary purpose
Treatment
Masking
Blinded (masking used) (Investigator)
Eligibility
Sex/Gender
All
Age
16 Years to No maximum
Healthy volunteers
Yes
Inclusion criteria
First year university students
Exclusion criteria
- Students who have already completed the Managing Emotion intervention as part of the open-label pilot study (Trial ID: ACTRN12620000390987) or pilot randomised controlled trial (Trial ID: ACTRN12620000839909) - Students identified as being at moderate (suicidal ideation in last 12 months) to high suicide risk (suicide attempt in last 12 months, or high future suicide risk as identified by algorithm) via a mental health screening survey (i.e. Curtin Wellbeing Survey).
Outcome results
None listed