NCT04341922

A Online-delivered Cognitive-behavioral Intervention for Dysfunctional Worry Related to the Covid-19 Pandemic

Evaluation of a Brief Online-delivered Cognitive-behavioral Intervention for Dysfunctional Worry Related to the Covid-19 Pandemic: A Randomized Controlled Trial

• Status: Unknown
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 670 (actual)
• Sponsor: Karolinska Institutet · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 16 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Not accepted

Summary

The purpose of this study is to investigate if a brief online-delivered cognitive-behavioral intervention can reduce the degree of dysfunctional worry related to the Covid-19 pandemic, compared to a wait-list control condition.

Detailed description

Worries about the immediate and long-term consequences of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic are largely justified in the current climate of uncertainty. However, dysfunctional worry, that is, pervasive worry that is disproportionate in its intensity or duration, and that significantly interferes with every-day problem-solving or goal-driven behavior, is clearly counterproductive. Research has also indicated that repeated media exposure to a community crisis can lead to increased anxiety and heightened stress responses, that can give a downstream effect on health, and misplaced health-protective and help-seeking behaviors which, in turn, may overburden health care facilities. There is an urgent need to develop a brief, scalable intervention to target such dysfunctional worry in the general population. The current randomized controlled trial will evaluate the feasibility and efficacy of a brief online-delivered cognitive behavioral intervention designed to target dysfunctional worry related to the Covid-19 pandemic. 670 individuals are randomized to intervention or to waiting-list. The hypothesis is that the brief self-guided intervention will show significant within-group reductions in self-rated worry from baseline (week 0) to post-treatment (week 3), and that these improvements will be larger than those seen in the wait-list control group. The wait-list group will be crossed over to receive the intervention after three weeks (post-treatment). All participants will be followed-up one month and one year after the end of the intervention.

Conditions

• Dysfunctional Worry

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
BEHAVIORAL	Internet-delivered cognitive behavior therapy (ICBT) for dysfunctional worry related to the Covid-19 pandemic	The intervention focuses on 1) teaching participants how to discriminate between functional and dysfunctional worry (what are solvable problems vs. what is worry, i.e. unsolvable thoughts?) 2) providing participants with skills to solve functional worry topics (e.g. set time and make a workable plan to be prepared for possible negative outcomes \[e.g. becoming unemployed\]), 3) helping participants to reduce unhelpful behaviors that may reinforce worry (e.g., limit excessive news consumption, refrain from assurance seeking behaviors), 4) providing participants with skills to approach dysfunctional worry (e.g., not engage in worrisome thoughts, just leave them), and 5) increase the behavioral repertoire (take walks, engage in activities that promote health without putting oneself at risk to become infected).

Timeline

• Start date: 2020-05-09
• Primary completion: 2020-08-20
• Completion: 2021-09-10
• First posted: 2020-04-10
• Last updated: 2020-10-19

Locations

1 site across 1 country: Sweden