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

Not Applicable

Completed

• Conditions: Stress
• Interventions: Behavioral: Brief Acceptance Intervention; Behavioral: Psychoeducation

• Registration Number: NCT06335615
• Lead Sponsor: VU University of Amsterdam

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.

Detailed Description

Not available

Study Timeline

• Study Start: 2023-11-27
• Primary Completion: 2023-12-19
• Study Completion: 2023-12-19
• Status Verified: 2024-03
• Study First Submitted: 2024-03-21
• Study First Submitted QC: 2024-03-21
• Last Update Submitted: 2024-03-21
• Study First Posted: 2024-03-28
• Last Update Posted: 2024-03-28

Recruitment & Eligibility

• Status: COMPLETED
• Sex: All
• Target Recruitment: 116

Inclusion Criteria

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

Exclusion Criteria

• 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

Study & Design

• Study Type: INTERVENTIONAL
• Study Design: PARALLEL

Arm && Interventions

Group	Intervention	Description
Intervention	Brief Acceptance Intervention	The intervention group follows a one-hour in-person intervention focused on acceptance of stress. Each participant follows this intervention individually.
Control	Psychoeducation	The control group follows a 20-minute online psychoeducation at home. Each participant follows this intervention individually.

Primary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Psychological Well-Being	Change from baseline (1 - 14 days before the intervention/psychoeducation) to post measurement (3 days after the intervention/psychoeducation)	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.

Secondary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
State Anxiety	Change from baseline (1 - 14 days before the intervention/psychoeducation) to post measurement (3 days after the intervention/psychoeducation)	The six-item version of the Spielberger State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI; Marteau \& Bekker, 1992) is a brief, valid, and reliable questionnaire to assess participants' state anxiety.
Study Stress	Change from baseline (1 - 14 days before the intervention/psychoeducation) to post measurement (3 days after the intervention/psychoeducation)	A single question was used for study-related stress: How much stress related to studying are you currently experiencing on a scale of 0 (no stress) to 10 (extreme stress)?
Psychological Flexibility	Change from baseline (1 - 14 days before the intervention/psychoeducation) to post measurement (3 days after the intervention/psychoeducation)	The Comprehensive Assessment of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Processes questionnaire (CompACT; Francis et al., 2016) measures the underlying processes of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. It has good psychometric properties (Francis et al., 2016). We will be especially interested in the subscale openness to experience, which corresponds to the processes of acceptance and defusion.
Interoceptive awareness	Change from baseline (1 - 14 days before the intervention/psychoeducation) to post measurement (3 days after the intervention/psychoeducation)	The Multidimensional Assessment of Interoceptive Awareness (MAIA-2, Mehling et al., 2018) measured body awareness. In line with Ferentzi and colleagues (2020) and for enhanced psychometric validity, we will combine six subscales to measure a general level of interoception.

Trial Locations

Locations (1)

University of Amsterdam; 🇳🇱 Amsterdam, Noord-Holland, Netherlands