Online Positive Emotion Skills Intervention for Symptoms of Depression
DepressionPsychological Stress1 moreMajor depressive disorder affects over 120 million people worldwide. Only 50% of Americans with depression receive adequate treatment, and one-third of those receiving treatment do not benefit. In this pilot project investigators will bring together two approaches that have the promise to reach large numbers of depression sufferers: a skills-based intervention for increasing positive affect and experiences in depressed individuals, delivered in an inexpensive self-paced mobile format. The study will make use of smartphone technology to improve conventional outcome measurement via in-the-moment emotion sampling and mobile assessment of heart rate variability, a predictor of cardiac health that may mediate some of the health effects of depression. The aims are: 1) Retool the existing web-based positive emotion intervention for use on smartphones, with innovative exercises that help participants bring the skills they are learning into real-life situations; 2) Perform a small feasibility trial of the mobile intervention on individuals with clinical depression recruited online 3) Eventually incorporate feedback from the small feasibility trial to improve the online intervention and conduct a full randomized trial on a larger scale
Stress Free Now, a Mind-body Reduction Program for Nurses
Psychological StressAnxiety1 moreMindful meditation sessions have been associated with an improvement in mindfulness, perceived stress, psychological well-being, anxiety, hostility, and depression. Meditation has been associated with a decrease in autonomic sympathetic activity, heart rate, oxygen consumption and energy expenditure. Randomized controlled trials of online mindfulness and relaxation programs have been studied in patients with conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome, headache, depression, fibromyalgia, and insomnia. Nurses may benefit from such programs given levels of job stress. This study will determine whether an online stress reduction program that incorporates meditation with and without concomitant group support reduces burnout among nurses, including emotional exhaustion and depersonalization. The proposed research study will utilize Stress Free Now, an online stress reduction program developed by Cleveland Clinic Wellness Institute.
Adaptive Internet-based Stress Management Among Adults With a Cardiovascular Disease: A Pilot Sequential...
Cardiovascular DiseasesStress1 moreInternet-based stress management programs adapted to patients' needs Stress is inevitable, and it has many negative consequences on the health of everybody, but particularly on the health of patients with a cardiovascular disease (CVD). The good news is that patients with CVD can learn to better control their stress through stress management programs. Most stress management programs are offered face-to-face by a trained health care professional. Research has shown that these programs have a positive impact on the health of patients with CVD, including reducing mortality and other risk factors that can make the disease worse (e.g., reduces blood pressure). Because of these benefits, the recommendation is to offer a stress management program to as many patients with CVD as possible. The problem is that their delivery is challenging for most clinics (e.g., too costly to run, health care professionals are not available). This means many good stress management programs never make it to the patient. Patients also face barriers in accessing traditional stress management programs such as stigma or need to travel. Therefore, new approaches are needed to allow findings from research to actually have an impact on the public's health. One of these approaches is to use the internet to deliver stress management programs. The internet has now been used for about 10 years to deliver a range of programs to patients. There are limitations to this approach as well. For instance, 40-60% of patients who will use an internet-based program will not benefit from it. These patients need more support or guidance to get the most out of their internet-based program. This is the problem addressed using the proposed innovative trial design. Investigators aim to improve the number of patients with CVD who improve after receiving a stress management program by changing the type and level of support they receive over time. This type of innovative trial design is more and more popular, but has never been used to enhance a stress management programs for patients with CVD.
C-STRESS: A Mental Health App for College Students With Depression
DepressionAnxiety3 moreThe goal of this pilot study is to examine the feasibility of the prototype C-STRESS app with 3 college students from UCI with clinically significant depression (scored ≥ 10 on the Patient Health Questionnaire-9). The main question it aims to answer is: whether the prototype C-STRESS is useful for college students to manage daily stress and depression symptoms. Participants were asked to use the C-STRESS app daily for 6 weeks to participate in CBCT lessons, watch guided meditation videos, complete short reflective exercises, and engage with other content provided in C-STRESS (i.e., attending drop-in sessions, journaling, completing mood and wellbeing check-ins, and reading educational articles on depression, anxiety, and stress). At the end of week 3 and 6, participants completed 6 online surveys (System Usability Scale, Technology Acceptance Model, Patient Health Questionnaire-9, General Anxiety Disorder-7, Health Related Quality of Life-4, and Brief-COPE) to assess C-STRESS's usability/feasibility and changes in depressive symptoms and coping styles over the study period.
Supporting Parent and Child Engagement
StressPsychological2 moreThe COVID-19 pandemic and measures aimed at reducing the spread of the virus have created unique challenges and stresses for Canadian families. Balancing work, family, and daily life has become extremely difficult for many families. Economic uncertainty is widespread as many parents are dealing with increased demands such as working from home, running the household, and homeschooling and caring for their children without the support of their social networks. Recent findings from a study on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on young families conducted by our lab found that parents reported increased levels of stress, difficulties in following through with their parenting duties, and challenges managing their children's behaviour. Accessible programs are urgently needed to help parents cultivate supportive family relationships during and in recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic as physical distancing and public health requirements have further decreased the accessibility of existing programming. The proposed research aims to test the relative value of multiple light-touch parenting supports (developed through the REB-approved BRIDGE program, NCT04347707 and NCT04639557) in a 2-arm randomized control trial including behaviour management and emotion-focused strategies delivered through psychoeducational parenting videos, structured family activities, and an online parenting support group. The investigators plan to evaluate the efficacy of this program at reducing parenting stress (primary outcome) and promoting family well-being (secondary outcomes).
RCT of CESIP for Children With Emotional and Stress Problems
Emotional StressTo explore the effect of Child-Adolescent Emotion and Stress Intervention Program for children with emotional and stress problems, providing early social psychological intervention for aiming the core impairments of emotional and stress problems.
Anticipated Versus Actual Patient and Caregiver Burden Following Ambulatory Orthopedic Surgery
StressPsychological1 moreIn 2011, 38.6 million hospital stays occurred in the United States at a cost of $387.2 billion. 47.9 percent involved hospitalizations during which surgical procedures were performed. Orthopedic procedures constituted the most frequently performed and most costly of operating room procedures. As the healthcare climate in the United States continues to change, there is a trend towards providing effective care in a fiscally conservative manner. Central to this strategy is the shift towards increasing ambulatory surgical procedures from surgeries requiring post-operative admission for patients. While savings to hospitals and third-party payers are implied, there may be an unrecognized increase in financial, physical, and psychosocial post-operative costs to patients undergoing ambulatory surgery and to their caregivers. Rawal et al., and McGarth and colleagues have found that patients undergoing orthopedic procedures had moderate to severe post-operative pain. We propose to present a survey to patients and their caregivers before surgery and at multiple timepoints post-operatively to acquire information on the impacts of ambulatory orthopedic surgery. In addition to assessing post-operative pain, this study serves to examine various other possible burdens to patients that have not been previously evaluated in this patient population. REFERENCES McGarth B, Elgendy H, Chung F, Kamming D, Curti B, King S. Thirty percent of patients have a moderate to severe pain 24 hr after ambulatory surgery: a survey of 5,703 patients. Can J Anesth. 2004; 51:886-891. Rawal N, Hylander J, Nydahl P, Olofsson I, Gupta A. Survey of postoperative analgesia following ambulatory surgery. Acta Anesthesiol Scand. 1997; 41:1017-1022.
Cognitive and Health Benefits of Expressive Writing for Family Caregivers Under Stress
StressPsychological1 moreThe purpose of this study is to determine if expressive writing is an effective intervention for reducing stress, enhancing cognition, and improving quality of life for caregivers of older adults with dementia
Effectiveness of Avapro in Obese Normotensive/Hypertensive African Americans
HypertensionObesity3 moreThe purpose of this study is to test the hypothesis that hypertension increases the anti-natriuretic effects of an angiotensin receptor antagonist during mental stress in overweight/obese African-American's who retain sodium during mental stress.
The Stress Reduction Intervention Study
StressPhysiological2 moreThe primary purpose of the present study is to investigate the relationship between mindfulness and stress habituation. The investigators propose to measure the effect of mindfulness on stress habituation by randomly assigning participants to a 6-week mindfulness-based stress reduction group intervention, a cognitive-behavioral skills group comparison intervention, or a waitlist control condition followed by repeated acute psychosocial stress testing (2 laboratory sessions on 2 separate days). Saliva will be collected from participants throughout both laboratory testing sessions to measure HPA axis activation (an essential stress-responsive system), along with other measures of physiological and psychological stress (e.g., heart rate, blood pressure, emotions). Mediators and moderators of treatment outcome will be examined. The cognitive-behavioral skills group condition is an appropriate comparison group due to the well-documented efficacy of cognitive-behavioral interventions on stress.