A Pilot Evaluation of a Digital Peer Support Intervention for Suicidal Adolescents
- Conditions
- Suicide
- Interventions
- Behavioral: Supporting Wellbeing with Everyday Experiences of Peers (SWEEP)
- Registration Number
- NCT06349915
- Lead Sponsor
- Albert Einstein College of Medicine
- Brief Summary
Suicide risk has increased among youth in underserved communities, where access to mental healthcare is limited. To address this need, the investigator team plans to evaluate the preliminary efficacy of a brief, low-cost, culturally responsive digital intervention for ethnically diverse youth at risk for suicide in The Bronx, NY. In collaboration with community stakeholders, suicide recovery narratives, featuring adolescents' experiences related to recovery from suicidal thoughts will be developed. A smartphone ecological momentary assessment app will be used to evaluate whether a curriculum of these narratives provides anti-suicidal benefits to at-risk adolescents.
- Detailed Description
This is a single-arm investigation of a novel suicide prevention intervention, called "Supporting Wellbeing with Everyday Experiences of Peers" (SWEEP). In a preliminary phase of the study, suicide recovery narratives: short first-person stories about lived experience with and recovery from Bronx Adolescents will be collected. The investigator team will then evaluate evaluate the anti-suicidal benefits of this intervention in a single-arm trial. Adolescent participants (n=46) will be provided with the SWEEP intervention, which involves reading or listening to one suicide recovery narrative each day during the 14-day trial. The narratives will be provided, in audio and text formats via a smartphone app. That same smartphone app will also collect real-time (ecological momentary) assessments of suicidal thoughts, the primary outcome of the study, five times per day. This app will also collect secondary and additional outcomes. The investigator team will evaluate whether participants experience reductions in the intensity of suicidal thoughts over the course of the 14-day trial.
Recruitment & Eligibility
- Status
- NOT_YET_RECRUITING
- Sex
- All
- Target Recruitment
- 46
- past-month history of suicidal thoughts
- past-month history of Major depressive disorder
- possession of apple or android smartphone with data plan
- inability to read/write in English
- Active mania
- Active psychosis
- Autism spectrum disorder
Study & Design
- Study Type
- INTERVENTIONAL
- Study Design
- SINGLE_GROUP
- Arm && Interventions
Group Intervention Description Intervention Supporting Wellbeing with Everyday Experiences of Peers (SWEEP) This is a single-arm study. All participants will be allocated to the intervention arm, in which they will receive the digital narrative therapy.
- Primary Outcome Measures
Name Time Method Suicidal Thoughts 5 times per day during 14-day trial Participants will self-report their current subjective intensity of suicidal thoughts using an 11-point Likert-type scale, with higher scores indicating more intense suicidal thoughts.
- Secondary Outcome Measures
Name Time Method Suicidal Urge Resistance 5 times per day during 14-day trial Participants will self-report the strength of their current ability to resist suicidal urges using an 11-point Likert-type scale, with higher scores indicating greater ability to resist suicidal urges.
Optimism 5 times per day during 14-day trial Participants will self-report their current of feelings of optimism about the future using an 11-point Likert-type scale, with higher scores indicating greater optimism.
Social Support 5 times per day during 14-day trial Participants will self-report their current perception of the availability of emotional support from others using an 11-point Likert-type scale, with higher scores indicating the perception greater availability of emotional support from others.
Intervention Acceptability Study conclusion (at the end of the 14-day trial) Participants will self-report their current perception of acceptability of the SWEEP intervention across three items. Participants will rate the usefulness of receiving the narratives using a 7-point Likert-type scale, with higher scores indicating that the narratives were more useful. Participants will rate the difficulty of reading or listening to the narratives each day using a 7-point Likert-type scale, with higher scores indicating that the narratives were more difficult to read or listen to. This item will be reverse coded. Participants will rate how willing they are to recommend the narratives to their peers using a 7-point Likert-type scale, with higher scores indicating greater willingness to recommend the narratives. Each of these items will be evaluated in isolation, as well as in aggregate using both summation and an arithmetic mean score.
Social Connectedness 5 times per day during 14-day trial Participants will self-report their current feelings of being connected to other people using an 11-point Likert-type scale, with higher scores indicating feeling more being connected to other people.
Trial Locations
- Locations (1)
Montefiore Health System
🇺🇸Bronx, New York, United States