Evaluation of an mHealth App: A Randomized Controlled Trial of DeStressify on Campus Staff and Student Mental Health

Development and use of mobile technologies, in particular mHealth applications, to improve health have exponentially increased in the past decade. Despite the widespread use of apps, there has been astonishingly few scientific evaluations on the efficacy of such products to improve or change health behaviours. The purpose of this research is to systematically evaluate, through a randomized controlled trial, the effectiveness of an existing mental health app at reducing depressive and anxiety symptomatology, sleep disturbance, and maintaining health related quality of life in university students, campus staff, and faculty over a 4-week period. It is anticipated that staff, students, and faculty randomly assigned to use of the app will experience significant decreases in symptoms of stress and anxiety, report greater sleep quality, and maintain health related quality of life as compared to those assigned to the wait-list control condition.

Faculty Supervisor:

Mary Jung

Student:

Rebecca Lee

Partner:

Canadian Mental Health Association

Discipline:

Human physical performance and recreation

Sector:

Information and communications technologies

University:

Program: