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- Ly, Kien Hoa, et al.
(författare)
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Behavioral activation-based guided self-help treatment administered through a smartphone application : study protocol for a randomized controlled trial
- 2012
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Ingår i: Trials. - : BioMed Central (BMC). - 1745-6215. ; 13, s. art.nr. 62-
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Background: The need for cost-effective interventions for people suffering from major depressive disorders is essential. Behavioral activation is an intervention that can largely benefit from the use of new mobile technologies (for example smartphones). Therefore, developing smartphone-based behavioral activation interventions might be a way to develop cost-effective treatments for people suffering from major depressive disorders. The aim of this study will be to test the effects of a smartphone-delivered behavioral activation treatment.Methods:The study will be a randomized controlled trial with a sample size of 120 participants, with 60 patients in each group. The treatment group includes an 8-week smartphone-based behavioral activation intervention, with minimal therapist contact. The smartphone-based intervention consists of a web-based psychoeducation, and a smartphone application. There is also a back-end system where the therapist can see reports from the patients or activities being reported. In the attention control group, we will include brief online education and then recommend use of a smartphone application that is not directly aimed at depression (for example, ‘ Effective meditation’). The duration of the control condition will also be 8 weeks. For ethical reasons we will give the participants in the control group access to the behavioral activation treatment following the 8-week treatment period.Discussions: We believe that this trial has at least three important implications. First, we believe that smartphones can be integrated even further into society and therefore may serve an important role in health care. Second, while behavioral activation is a psychological treatment approach for which there is empirical support, the use of a smartphone application could serve as the therapist ’ s prolonged arm into the daily life of the patient. Third, as we have been doing trials on guided Internet treatment for more than 10 years it is now time to move to the next generation of information technology - smartphones - which are not only relevant for Swedish conditions but also for developing countries in the world which are increasingly empowered by mobile phones with Internet connection.Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT01463020
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| 2. |
- Ly, Kien Hoa, et al.
(författare)
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Development and initial evaluation of a smartphone application based on acceptance and commitment therapy
- 2012
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Ingår i: SpringerPlus. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 2193-1801. ; 1
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Background: An intervention, consisting of an ACT-based smartphone-application and a web-based psychoeducation, has been developed. The smartphone-application, together with the psychoeducation, aims to function as a self-help intervention for living consistently with one's values. The study is an exploratory investigation of this new smartphone-based tool.Case description: Primarily, the study aims at investigating a new field, providing a basis for generating hypotheses for further research. The first aim of this initial, exploratory study was to examine if this intervention had an effect on the variables of: valued actions, psychological flexibility, and life satisfaction as well as the states of depression, anxiety and stress, for a non-clinical sample of 11 Swedish Iphone users. This was made with a quasi-experimental pretest-posttest design without control group. The second aim was to investigate how the participants experienced the intervention, as measured by a qualitative questionnaire.Discussion and evaluation: The group analyses showed that the participants increased their valued action and psychological flexibility significantly during the intervention. Furthermore, value-based actions and psychological flexibility showed small effect sizes when comparing pretest and posttest score. However, the design of the study makes it impossible to draw any certain conclusions. The qualitative questionnaire showed a general positive experience of the intervention.Conclusions: The results from the present study indicated that the intervention should be studied further. The findings also generated a number of hypotheses that could be investigated in further research.
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