A Brief Acceptance Intervention for Stress to Improve Students' Well-Being

VU University of Amsterdam116 enrolled

Overview

The goal of this randomized controlled trial is to test a brief psychological intervention that focusses on acceptance of stress in a student population. The main questions it aims to answer are: * Does this brief acceptance intervention increase the well-being of students in the short term? * By which mechanisms does this effect occur? * What are moderating factors of this effect? Half of the participants follow a one-hour intervention, which includes * psychoeducation and metaphors about stress and how acceptance can help to deal with it * experiential exercises * mindfulness meditation * mindfulness homework practice Students that receive the intervention will be compared to students that merely received psychoeducation about stress and acceptance to see if the intervention lead to larger increases in well-being.

Study Type

INTERVENTIONAL

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

TREATMENT

Masking

SINGLE

Enrollment

116

Conditions

Stress

Interventions

The intervention consist of explanations and exercises about acceptance of stress. The intervention starts with a welcome, after which participants do jumping jacks and then breath through a straw to induce an uncomfortable experience. Next, a Chinese finger trap is used to show the automatic, but often not useful, reaction to avoid stress. Participants then watch a short video that introduces the concept of acceptance, and they do a short, guided meditation. Afterwards, they do the straw exercise again, but this time with instruction to examine and allow uncomfortable experiences. The session ends with a recap and the introduction of the home exercise. Participants install an app that reminds them every hour to do a three-second meditation in which they pay attention to their breathing and body in an accepting way.

PsychoeducationBEHAVIORAL

In the psychoeducation, participants learn about the stress response, mindfulness, and acceptance. For this, they are guided through a vignette about a student who struggles with stress and then develops a more accepting stance towards it. The psychoeducation explains how acceptance can help to deal with stress but does not instruct participants to apply this in their own life.

Eligibility

Sex: ALLMin age: 17 YearsMax age: 29 YearsHealthy volunteers:

Medical Language ↔ Plain English

Inclusion Criteria: * Student at the University of Amsterdam in the Bachelor's programme psychology or communication science Exclusion Criteria: * Panic Disorder as measured with the Rapid Measurement Toolkit-20 (Batterham et al., 2020; cutoff at 9) * Asthma, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), another lung disease (including covid-related lung complaints), or tightness of chest * Pregnancy * Physical disability that limits ability to move and jump

Outcomes

Primary Outcomes

Psychological Well-Being

Psychological well-being was measured with the General Health Questionnaire-12 (GHQ-12, Goldberg \& Williams, 1988), which is a unidimensional measure of mental health with good psychometric properties (Romppel et al., 2013). Higher scores on the GHQ-12 indicate more psychological distress and lower well-being.