The impact of coach-guided risk communication on the risk of major depression: A randomized controlled trial

Depression is a highly prevalent and disabling mental health problem. One way of preventing depression is to stop it before it happens through effective self-management. Working with potential users, we developed a coach-guided, personalized depression risk communication tool (PDRC) for sharing information about individualized depression risk, risk profile (risk factors present), potential risk reduction and evidence-based self-help strategies. We anticipate that the PDRC will greatly motivate users to actively engage in self-help and help-seeking, leading to a reduced risk of depression. The proposed study will recruit 500 male and 500 female adults who are at high risk of having depression across Canada, and randomly allocate them into the intervention and control groups. They will be followed for 12 months. The data of the trial will allow us to answer the questions: (1) Can the coach-guided PDRC reduce the risk of depression? (2) Does the intervention motivate people to actively engage in evidence-based self-help and help-seeking behaviors? (3) For whom the intervention works best? and (4) what are the costs and potential savings associated with the intervention? If successful, this project will offer a novel and effective tool for early prevention of major depression in the Canadian general population, help us understand how it works and the cost-effectiveness of implementing such a tool in the community from the economic perspective.