Mindfulness Virtual Community for Student’s Mental Health: A Randomized Control Trial (Preprint)
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND The rising prevalence of mental health problems in university students may be overwhelming traditional university mental health services. Given the demonstrated anxiolytic and antidepressant benefits of mindfulness, we developed an eight-week online Mindfulness Virtual Community (MVC) intervention. Twelve psycho-educational videos on topics students pre-identified as stressful, prepared the trial participants for subsequent videos that guided them in 10 minutes of topically applied mindfulness practice. All video content was informed by Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) constructs. Optional peer-to-peer text-based discussion and weekly live chat sessions were monitored and led by a mental health professional. OBJECTIVE To investigate the efficacy of an online MVC intervention in reducing symptoms of depression, anxiety and stress (primary outcomes) among undergraduate students in Toronto, Canada. The secondary outcomes included quality of life and life satisfaction. METHODS Recruitment for the three-arm randomized trial was undertaken with flyers, university-based listserv announcements, and postings associated with university courses where instructors granted credit for participation. Consenting students (n=119) were randomized to a wait list control group (WLC) or to a full MVC intervention (F-MVC) or to a partial MVC intervention (P-MVC) (which used videos only) (n=40, n=40, n=39). Participants were informed of allocation after consenting. The baseline (T1) and additional assessment sessions at 4 weeks (T2) and 8 weeks (T3) included the Patient Health Questionnaire-9, Beck Anxiety Inventory and Perceived Stress Scale. Analyses employed Generalized Estimation Equation (GEE) methods with AR(1) covariance structures and were adjusted for possible confounding variables (i.e. gender, age, country of birth, paid work, unpaid work, vigorous physical activities, and self-rated health). RESULTS Of the 113 students who provided baseline data, 28 males (24.8%) and 85 females (75.2%) reported a mean age of 24.8 years and were mostly Canadian-born (59.3%). Participants in F-MVC (n=39), P-MVC (n=35) and WLC (n=39) groups were similar in socio-demographic characteristics at baseline. There were no significant between-group differences on any key outcome variable at baseline. At T3 follow-up, per adjusted comparisons, there were statistically significant reductions in depression scores for F-MVC (score change -3.36 points, p=0.001) and P-MVC (score change -3.12, p=0.008) when compared to WLC. At T3 there was statistically significant reduction in anxiety scores only for P-MVC (score change -5.59, p=0.01) when compared to WLC. There was also statistically significant reduction in scores for perceived stress (score change 2.1, p =0.04) but only for P-MVC compared to WLC. No statistically significant changes were found for the quality of life and life satisfaction for F-MVC or P-MVC versus WLC. CONCLUSIONS Internet-based mindfulness-CBT-based interventions, such as F-MVC and P-MVC, can result in significant reductions in depression, anxiety and stress in a student population. Such low-cost interventions can substitute for or supplement traditional, office-based counseling services. CLINICALTRIAL https://doi.org/10.1186/ISRCTN92827275
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.014 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".