|
?:abstract
|
-
BACKGROUND: In addition to the obvious medical (physical) impact of COVID-19, threats to mental health, psychological safety, and well-being are evident. Provision of support for these challenges is complicated by the high number of people requiring support and the need to maintain physical distancing. This motivated us to launch Text4Hope, a daily supportive texting messaging program, in Canada to mitigate the negative mental health impacts of the pandemic amongst Canadians. OBJECTIVE: This paper describes the changes in stress, anxiety, and depression levels after six weeks of exposure to daily supportive text messages. METHODS: We used self-administered, online, empirically-supported questionnaires to assess demographic and clinical characteristics of subscribers. Perceived stress, anxiety, and depression were measured with the Perceived Stress Scale-10 Items (PSS-10), the Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7) scale and the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9) scale at baseline and sixth week time points. Moderate or high perceived stress, likely GAD and Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) were assessed using cut-off scores of PSS-10 ≥ 14, GAD-7 ≥ 10, and PHQ-9 ≥ 10, respectively. After six-weeks into the program, 766 participants completed the questionnaires at both time points. RESULTS: At the sixth week time-point, there were statistically significant reductions in mean scores on the PSS-10 and GAD-7 scales, but not the PHQ-9 scale. Effect sizes were small overall. There were statistically significant reductions in the prevalence rates for moderate or high stress, likely GAD, and likely MDD for the group that completed both the baseline and sixth week assessments. The biggest reduction in mean scores and prevalence rates was for anxiety; 18.7% and 13.5% respectively. CONCLUSIONS: Text4Hope is a convenient, cost-effective, and accessible means for implementing a population-level psychological intervention. This service demonstrated significant reduction in anxiety and stress during the COVD-19 pandemic and could be used as a population-level mental health intervention during natural disasters and other emergencies. Limitations are discussed. CLINICALTRIAL: The study protocol is approved by the Research and Ethics Board of the University of Alberta (Pro00086163). INTERNATIONAL REGISTERED REPORT: RR2-10.2196/19292.
|
![[This page as RDF]](https://research.tib.eu/covid-19/static/rdf-icon.gif){kind=icon}