Résumé
Background: In addition to the obvious physical medical impact of COVID-19, the disease poses evident threats to people’s mental health, psychological safety, and well-being. Provision of support for these challenges is complicated by the high number of people requiring support and the need to maintain physical distancing. Text4Hope, a daily supportive SMS text messaging program, was launched in Canada to mitigate the negative mental health impacts of the pandemic among Canadians. Objective: This paper describes the changes in the stress, anxiety, and depression levels of subscribers to the Text4Hope program after 6 weeks of exposure to daily supportive SMS text messages. Methods: We used self-administered, empirically supported web-based questionnaires to assess the demographic and clinical characteristics of Text4Hope subscribers. Perceived stress, anxiety, and depression were measured with the 10-Item Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-10), the Generalized Anxiety Disorder–7 (GAD-7) scale, and the Patient Health Questionnaire–9 (PHQ-9) scale at baseline and sixth week time points. Moderate or high perceived stress, likely generalized anxiety disorder, and likely major depressive disorder were assessed using cutoff scores of ≥14 for the PSS-10, ≥10 for the GAD-7, and ≥10 for the PHQ-9, respectively. At 6 weeks into the program, 766 participants had completed the questionnaires at both time points. Results: At the 6-week time point, there were statistically significant reductions in mean scores on the PSS-10 and GAD-7 scales but not on the PHQ-9 scale. Effect sizes were small overall. There were statistically significant reductions in the prevalence rates of moderate or high stress and likely generalized anxiety disorder but not likely major depressive disorder for the group that completed both the baseline and 6-week assessments. The largest reductions in mean scores and prevalence rates were for anxiety (18.7% and 13.5%, respectively). Conclusions: Text4Hope is a convenient, cost-effective, and accessible means of implementing a population-level psychological intervention. This service demonstrated significant reductions in anxiety and stress levels during the COVID-19 pandemic and could be used as a population-level mental health intervention during natural disasters and other emergencies.
| Langue d'origine | English |
|---|---|
| Numéro d'article | e22423 |
| Journal | JMIR Mental Health |
| Volume | 7 |
| Numéro de publication | 12 |
| DOI | |
| Statut de publication | Published - déc. 2020 |
| Publié à l'externe | Oui |
Note bibliographique
Funding Information:Support for the project was received from Alberta Health Services and the University of Alberta. This study was supported by grants from the Mental Health Foundation, the Edmonton and Calgary Community Foundations, the Edmonton Civic Employees Foundation, the Calgary Health Trust, the University Hospital Foundation, the Alberta Children’s Hospital Foundation, the Royal Alexandra Hospital Foundation, and the Alberta Cancer Foundation. The funders had no role in the design and conduct of the study; collection, management, analysis, and interpretation of the data; preparation, review, or approval of the manuscript; or decision to submit the manuscript for publication.
Publisher Copyright:
© Vincent Israel Ouoku Agyapong, Marianne Hrabok, Wesley Vuong, Reham Shalaby, Jasmine Marie Noble, April Gusnowski, Kelly J Mrklas, Daniel Li, Liana Urichuk, Mark Snaterse, Shireen Surood, Bo Cao, Xin-Min Li, Russell Greiner, Andrew James Greenshaw.
ASJC Scopus Subject Areas
- Psychiatry and Mental health
ODD de l’ONU
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