Agyapong Vincent Israel Ouoku, Hrabok Marianne, Vuong Wesley, Shalaby Reham, Noble Jasmine Marie, Gusnowski April, Mrklas Kelly J, Li Daniel, Urichuk Liana, Snaterse Mark, Surood Shireen, Cao Bo, Li Xin-Min, Greiner Russell, Greenshaw Andrew James
Department of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada.
University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada.
JMIR Ment Health. 2020 Dec 18;7(12):e22423. doi: 10.2196/22423.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
INTERNATIONAL REGISTERED REPORT IDENTIFIER (IRRID): RR2-10.2196/19292.
新型冠状病毒肺炎（COVID-19）除了对身体造成明显的医学影响外，还对人们的心理健康、心理安全和幸福感构成了明显威胁。由于需要支持的人数众多且要保持社交距离，为应对这些挑战提供支持变得复杂。“希望短信”（Text4Hope）是一项每日提供支持的短信服务项目，在加拿大推出，旨在减轻疫情对加拿大人心理健康的负面影响。
本文描述了“希望短信”项目的订阅者在接收每日支持性短信6周后，其压力、焦虑和抑郁水平的变化。
我们使用基于网络的、经过实证支持的自填式问卷，评估“希望短信”订阅者的人口统计学和临床特征。在基线和第6周时间点，使用10项感知压力量表（PSS-10）、广泛性焦虑障碍7项量表（GAD-7）和患者健康问卷9项量表（PHQ-9）测量感知压力、焦虑和抑郁。分别使用PSS-10≥14、GAD-7≥10和PHQ-9≥10的临界值分数评估中度或高度感知压力、可能的广泛性焦虑障碍和可能的重度抑郁症。在项目进行到第6周时，7,66名参与者在两个时间点都完成了问卷。
在第6周时间点，PSS-10量表和GAD-7量表的平均得分有统计学意义的降低，但PHQ-9量表没有。总体效应量较小。对于完成基线和6周评估的组，中度或高度压力以及可能的广泛性焦虑障碍的患病率有统计学意义的降低，但可能的重度抑郁症患病率没有降低。平均得分和患病率下降幅度最大的是焦虑（分别为18.7%和13.5%）。
“希望短信”是实施人群层面心理干预的一种便捷、经济高效且易于获得的方式。这项服务在COVID-19大流行期间显示出焦虑和压力水平显著降低，可在自然灾害和其他紧急情况下用作人群层面的心理健康干预措施。
国际注册报告识别码（IRRID）：RR2-10.2196/19292。
