Anxiety & Depression Association of America

SOVA Ambassadors Community Setting

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to examine participant adherence to intervention feasibility and acceptability of intervention, attention control, and implementation strategy.

Condition

Depression

Eligibility

Eligible Ages: Between 14 Years and 21 Years
Eligible Genders: All
Accepts Healthy Volunteers: No

Inclusion Criteria

Ages 14 to 21 Can read and understand English Has completed 6th grade Scores at least 5 or greater on the PHQ-8 (depression) and/or 5 or greater on GAD-7 (anxiety) consistent with at least mild symptoms

Exclusion Criteria

no access to internet Has an intellectual or physical ability which prohibits reading text on the internet (can participate if able to use with assistance, e.g. can use text to speech) No active email account (can participate if plans to create one)

Study Design

Phase: N/A
Study Type: Interventional
Allocation: Randomized
Intervention Model: Parallel Assignment
Primary Purpose: Health Services Research
Masking: Single (Outcomes Assessor)
Masking Description: The statistician conducting analyses will be blinded to randomized arm.

Arm Groups

Arm	Description	Assigned Intervention
Experimental SOVA Peer Ambassador Program	Participants will be given login information for a website sova.pitt.edu. They will be given weekly emails notifications about new posts. The participant will be onboarded as a blogging peer ambassador. The participant will be expected to contribute content to the website at least once a month by 1. writing a blog article 2. sending information (de-identified photo or video or music) to post • If they choose this option they will be encouraged to submit their own photo, video, or music to the website or they will be encouraged to write a response to a photo, video, or music piece. 3. being interviewed by the RA and then the RA "ghostwriting" an article about the interview which they pre-approve prior to it being posted.	Behavioral: SOVA Ambassador The SOVA Ambassador intervention includes: adolescents will have access to the website specifically for adolescents: sova.pitt.edu These anonymous websites aim to: (1) challenge negative health beliefs and increase depression/anxiety knowledge through daily blog posts enhanced with peer commentary; (2) promote social support through online peer interactions; and (3) encourage parent-adolescent mental health communication through same day blog posts with questions for discussion. Participants that receive this intervention will contribute monthly articles and regular comments.
Active Comparator attention control: brief psychoeducational independent assignments	Participants will be sent a REDCap form where they will receive a link to a SOVA article to read and a question for them to answer about what they read that will be accessible only to the study team. They will be asked to do this a couple times a month and will be reminded about their participation.	Behavioral: Self-Reflection Participant will be given an article from the sova.pitt.edu website and a prompt to write about privately.

Recruiting Locations

More Details

Status: Recruiting
Sponsor: University of Pittsburgh

Study Contact

Ana Radovic, MD, MSc
4126927227
ana.radovic@chp.edu

Detailed Description

A 1:1 pilot randomized controlled trial of the SOVA Peer Ambassador Program compared to attention control: brief psychoeducational independent assignments (i.e. reading SOVA articles and responding to open-ended questions without content creation and without peer interaction) (N=40) and evaluate feasibility of implementation strategy.