A Brief Acceptance Intervention for Stress to Improve Students' Well-Being

NCT06335615 | Completed

• 1 other identifier: FMG-5790_2023
• Study Type: interventional
• Target: 116
• Locations: 1 country
• Sites: 1

Brief Summary

The goal of this randomized controlled trial is to test a brief psychological intervention that focusses on acceptance of stress in a student population. The main questions it aims to answer are:

• Does this brief acceptance intervention increase the well-being of students in the short term?
• By which mechanisms does this effect occur?
• What are moderating factors of this effect? Half of the participants follow a one-hour intervention, which includes
• psychoeducation and metaphors about stress and how acceptance can help to deal with it
• experiential exercises
• mindfulness meditation
• mindfulness homework practice Students that receive the intervention will be compared to students that merely received psychoeducation about stress and acceptance to see if the intervention lead to larger increases in well-being.

Conditions

Stress

Keywords

Acceptance; Acceptance and Commitment Therapy; Brief Intervention; Student Mental Health

Outcome Measures

Primary Outcomes (1)

• Psychological Well-Being

  Psychological well-being was measured with the General Health Questionnaire-12 (GHQ-12, Goldberg \& Williams, 1988), which is a unidimensional measure of mental health with good psychometric properties (Romppel et al., 2013). Higher scores on the GHQ-12 indicate more psychological distress and lower well-being.

  Change from baseline (1 - 14 days before the intervention/psychoeducation) to post measurement (3 days after the intervention/psychoeducation)

Secondary Outcomes (4)

• State Anxiety

  Change from baseline (1 - 14 days before the intervention/psychoeducation) to post measurement (3 days after the intervention/psychoeducation)

• Study Stress

  Change from baseline (1 - 14 days before the intervention/psychoeducation) to post measurement (3 days after the intervention/psychoeducation)

• Interoceptive awareness

  Change from baseline (1 - 14 days before the intervention/psychoeducation) to post measurement (3 days after the intervention/psychoeducation)

• Psychological Flexibility

  Change from baseline (1 - 14 days before the intervention/psychoeducation) to post measurement (3 days after the intervention/psychoeducation)

Study Arms (2)

Intervention

EXPERIMENTAL

The intervention group follows a one-hour in-person intervention focused on acceptance of stress. Each participant follows this intervention individually.

Behavioral: Brief Acceptance Intervention

Control

ACTIVE COMPARATOR

The control group follows a 20-minute online psychoeducation at home. Each participant follows this intervention individually.

Behavioral: Psychoeducation

Interventions

Brief Acceptance Intervention BEHAVIORAL

The intervention consist of explanations and exercises about acceptance of stress. The intervention starts with a welcome, after which participants do jumping jacks and then breath through a straw to induce an uncomfortable experience. Next, a Chinese finger trap is used to show the automatic, but often not useful, reaction to avoid stress. Participants then watch a short video that introduces the concept of acceptance, and they do a short, guided meditation. Afterwards, they do the straw exercise again, but this time with instruction to examine and allow uncomfortable experiences. The session ends with a recap and the introduction of the home exercise. Participants install an app that reminds them every hour to do a three-second meditation in which they pay attention to their breathing and body in an accepting way.

Intervention

Psychoeducation BEHAVIORAL

In the psychoeducation, participants learn about the stress response, mindfulness, and acceptance. For this, they are guided through a vignette about a student who struggles with stress and then develops a more accepting stance towards it. The psychoeducation explains how acceptance can help to deal with stress but does not instruct participants to apply this in their own life.

Control

Eligibility Criteria

• Age: 17 Years - 29 Years
• Sex: all
• Healthy Volunteers: Yes
• Age Groups: Child (0-17), Adult (18-64)

You may qualify if:

• Student at the University of Amsterdam in the Bachelor's programme psychology or communication science

You may not qualify if:

• Panic Disorder as measured with the Rapid Measurement Toolkit-20 (Batterham et al., 2020; cutoff at 9)
• Asthma, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), another lung disease (including covid-related lung complaints), or tightness of chest
• Pregnancy
• Physical disability that limits ability to move and jump

Sponsors & Collaborators

• VU University of Amsterdam: lead

Study Sites (1)

University of Amsterdam

Amsterdam, North Holland, 1018 WS, Netherlands

Location

Study Design

• Study Type: interventional
• Phase: not applicable
• Allocation: RANDOMIZED
• Masking: SINGLE
• Who Masked: PARTICIPANT
• Purpose: TREATMENT
• Intervention Model: PARALLEL
• Sponsor Type: OTHER
• Responsible Party: PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
• PI Title: Assistant Professor

Study Record Dates

• First Submitted: March 21, 2024
• First Posted: March 28, 2024
• Study Start: November 27, 2023
• Primary Completion: December 19, 2023
• Study Completion: December 19, 2023
• Last Updated: March 28, 2024

Record last verified: 2024-03

Data Sharing

• IPD Sharing: Will share
• Shared Documents: ICF, ANALYTIC CODE
• Time Frame: Data will be made available with publication of the journal article. There is no specified time limit for availability.

Locations

NL (1)