Abstract
Despite the widespread prevalence of mental health problems, most psychological distress remains untreated. Internet-based psychological interventions can be an essential tool for increasing treatment availability and accessibility. The main objective of the MindBlooming project is to design and implement an innovative Internet-based multi-approach treatment for university students suffering from psychological or physical problems. The intervention will focus on symptoms of depression, anxiety, sleep problems, self-destructive thoughts, job- and study-related stress and burnout, and chronic pain. It will be based on different approaches, primarily psychoeducation, Cognitive-Behavioral Treatment (CBT), and third-wave CBT. At the end of the treatment, user satisfaction and usability will be assessed. In addition, two further aims will be evaluating the treatment efficacy through a randomized controlled trial and tuning a predictive model through Machine Learning techniques. The intervention consists of a 7-week treatment on two problematic areas according to each students’ personal needs, identified through an initial assessment. Besides the treatment assigned following the initial screening, participants will also be assigned to a different module to improve their relational skills. The treatment, which can be accessed through a mobile app, consists of psychoeducational videos followed by related exercises. We expect MindBlooming to be a remarkable tool for promoting the mental health of university students.
Highlights
Worldwide, data about the prevalence of mental health issues are alarming: in 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, more than 30% of the general population suffered from depression, anxiety, distress, or insomnia [1]
University students aged between 18 and 29 will be invited to participate; to be included, they must declare to have experienced at least mild- or moderate-intensity forms of mental health symptoms, and they must not currently be in psychotherapy or start psychotherapy during the entire duration of the treatment
Questionnaire (CSQ-8) [31], an 8-item questionnaire rated on a 4-point Likert scale; and a Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) [32]; System usability, via completion of a modified version of the System Usability Scale (SUS) [33], which is a 10-item questionnaire rated on a 5-point Likert scale that provides a global measure of subjective usability; and a VAS [32]; Adherence rates for each lesson and the overall program
Summary
Data about the prevalence of mental health issues are alarming: in 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, more than 30% of the general population suffered from depression, anxiety, distress, or insomnia [1]. The prevalence of psychological issues among university students, including depression, anxiety [4], insomnia [5], suicidal thoughts and behaviors [6], stress or burnout [7], and chronic pain [8], appears to be increasing worldwide [5,9]. Internet-based interventions (IBIs) are a promising way to improve treatment accessibility and availability [17]. MindBlooming is a mobile app for a multi-approach treatment of psychological and physical problems in university students. To the best of our knowledge, this will be the first attempt to deliver such an intervention (i.e., a multiapproach IBI that deals with different psychological and physical problems, and is tailored) to the university students’ population
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