Examining the Effectiveness, Mediators, and Moderators of a Brief Acceptance Intervention for Stress to Improve Students' Well-Being: A Randomized Controlled Trial
Overview
- Phase
- N/A
- Intervention
- Not specified
- Conditions
- Stress
- Sponsor
- VU University of Amsterdam
- Enrollment
- 116
- Locations
- 1
- Primary Endpoint
- Psychological Well-Being
- Status
- Completed
- Last Updated
- 2 years ago
Overview
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.
Investigators
Jaap Lancee
Assistant Professor
VU University of Amsterdam
Eligibility Criteria
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
Outcomes
Primary Outcomes
Psychological Well-Being
Time Frame: 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 Outcomes
- 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))
- Psychological Flexibility(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))