NCT04359563

You.Mind! | Boosting First-line Mental Health Care for Youngsters Suffering From Chronic Conditions With Mindfulness

You.Mind! | Boosting First-line Mental Health Care for Youngsters Suffering From Chronic Conditions With Mindfulness: A Randomised Staggered Within-subjects Design

• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 22 (actual)
• Sponsor: KU Leuven · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 14 Years – 19 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Accepted

Summary

Adolescents with chronic conditions often experience high levels of stress, anxiety and depression and reduced quality of life. Mindfulness-Based Interventions (MBI) have been found to improve emotional distress in clinical and non-clinical populations. Recent reviews suggest that MBIs are a promising technique to support adolescents with a chronic condition in managing their symptoms and ultimately enhance their quality of life. To test the effects of an MBI on emotional distress and quality of life and delineate the underlying mechanisms, the You.Mind! study uses a randomised staggered within-subjects design. 30 adolescents with a chronic condition (taking drop-out into account) will be randomised to a baseline phase of 14 to 28 days followed by an MBI, consisting of 4 online group sessions and online support spread over 8 weeks. Outcomes will be assessed by short, repeated measurements throughout the baseline, training, and follow-up phases and by standardized questionnaires and experience sampling measures before randomisation, at post-intervention and 3-months follow-up. Analysis will be based on general linear modelling and multilevel mixed-effects modelling. The investigators hypothesize that a MBI can help adolescents with a chronic condition to reduce their symptoms of stress, anxiety and depression, and increase their quality of life.

Detailed description

Once a pool of 15 participants has been enrolled, they will be randomised to one of three MBI groups, which start their training with half a week time lag. Within each group, participants will be randomised to a baseline phase of 2, 2.5, 3, 3.5 or 4 weeks, with 3-4 days between starting points of individual participants. Thus, the baseline phase will start at different time points for participants within the same group to enable them to start the intervention simultaneously while having baseline phases of varying length. Participants from different groups may begin their baseline phase at the same time while their intervention starts at a different time point. The same procedure will be repeated for the second pool of 15 participants.

Conditions

• Chronic Illness

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
BEHAVIORAL	Mindfulness-Based Intervention	The MBI consists of four 2h online group sessions spread over eight weeks. In between sessions, online support will be offered to assist participants in their practice. Each session consists of guided mindfulness exercises (e.g., focus on the breath, body scan, breathing space, mindful yoga, insight meditation, walk meditation), sharing of experiences of these exercises, reflections in small groups, psycho-education (e.g., stress, depression, self-care), and review of home practices. An overview of core elements is given in Van der Gucht et al. (2017b). The MBI is supported by homework assignments and audio material. Groups will include 5 participants, yielding 6 groups in total. The MBI will be delivered by highly qualified certified trainers with more than 10 years of experience in mindfulness meditation and extensive experience working with adolescents. Trainers will attend inter- and supervision moments on a regular basis to check treatment fidelity and trainer adherence.

Timeline

• Start date: 2020-07-02
• Primary completion: 2022-02-09
• Completion: 2022-02-09
• First posted: 2020-04-24
• Last updated: 2023-04-19

Locations

1 site across 1 country: Belgium