Cereset Research To Reduce Stress In Healthcare Workers In The Time Of COVID-19

The primary objective of this study is to evaluate the effect of CR to improve the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) in healthcare workers with symptoms of stress, compared to waitlist control, at 4-6 weeks post intervention.

Secondary objectives include evaluating the effect of CR on the self-reported measures of sleep and anxiety. Exploratory measure include a variety of symptom inventories (mood, post-traumatic stress, quality of life, social support, and cognitive function), and autonomic cardiovascular regulation (heart rate variability, HRV).

Methods: This will be a single site, open label, randomized, waitlist controlled pilot clinical trial, enrolling adults aged 18 or older, who have self-reported symptoms of stress or anxiety, and meet a threshold score on self-reported inventories. Up to 166 participants will be enrolled in order to have at least 138 to complete the study. Participants will be randomly assigned to either an Early Intervention (EI) group which will receive 4 CR sessions of audible tones echoing current brainwave activity, following enrollment, or a Delayed Intervention (DI) group which will continue current care only, and will serve as a control group. Participants in both groups will continue their other current care throughout the study.

The primary outcome will be interval change in The Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) which assesses the perception of stress. It is a measure of the degree to which situations in one's life are appraised as stressful. Secondary outcomes include insomnia (Insomnia Severity Index, ISI) and anxiety (Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7, GAD-7). Exploratory outcomes to be collected include symptom inventories for depression (Center for Epidemiological Studies- Depression Scale, CES-D), traumatic stress (PTSD Checklist for civilians, PCL-C), overall quality of life (QOLS), social support (ISEL-12), the Multiple Ability Self-Report Questionnaire (MASQ) for cognitive function, Fatigue Severity Scale (FSS) for fatigue, and mental health (Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale, DASS -21). Details about COVID-19 status, interaction, workplace engagement, healthcare utilization, and exposure will be collected. Pre- and post-intervention data collection of physiological parameters (Heart rate, HR, and measures of autonomic cardiovascular regulation assessed by heart rate variability) will be assessed as exploratory outcomes.

All measures will be collected at an enrollment visit (V1), and participants will be randomly assigned to the EI or DI groups. For those in the EI group, the intervention will begin 0-7 days thereafter. Sessions will be administered over 10 days. Post-intervention data collections will be obtained at 0-7 days (V2) after completion of the intervention, and 4-6 weeks (V3, primary outcome) after the V2. Following V3, those in the DI group will be offered the opportunity to cross over to receive 4 CR sessions and will continue to be followed for data collections at 0-7 days (V4) after completing their sessions, and 4-6 weeks (V5) after V4. Because V4 and V5 are not required, these visits will be exploratory. Mean contrasts will be used to compare the changes in measures of autonomic cardiovascular regulation from V1 to V3, the primary outcome, as well as for exploratory outcomes. Linear mixed models, which can accommodate within-subject correlations due to repeated assessments over time, will be used to generate point estimates for effect size along with 95% confidence intervals.