University of Twente Student Theses

Login

Online e-mental health interventie Psyfit : een kwantitatief pre test- post test onderzoek naar het effect van de interventie Psyfit op psychische klachten.

Vos, L.A. (2014) Online e-mental health interventie Psyfit : een kwantitatief pre test- post test onderzoek naar het effect van de interventie Psyfit op psychische klachten.

[img] PDF
812kB
Abstract:Introduction: In the Netherlands, there is a large group of people dealing with mild to moderate depression and / or anxiety symptoms. In order to prevent that the symptoms lead to an actual disorder, the importance of preventive interventions is large. Positive psychological interventions are increasingly being used to meet this demand. Psyfit is an on-line self-help intervention, developed to meet the need to improve the well-being in general and reduce depressive symptoms. The motivation of this research lies mainly in the fact that a new strategy to implement the intervention is being used. Psyfit is implemented within the online GGD health monitor. By applying a proactive dissemination strategy it is possible to recruit participants on a large scale, to participate in the intervention Psyfit. By increasing the range of the intervention it can possibly also increase the effect of the intervention. The next step is to determine if the degree of adherence to the intervention has an effect on the presence of mild to moderate psychological complaints. This leads to the following research question: `Does participation in Psyfit based on a screening provided by the Public Health Service lead to a significant decrease of mental complaints``? Method: A pre-test post-test research design is used with this study. The participants of the intervention Psyfit have completed several tests, before and after the intervention, to determine the effect of the intervention. In this study the Kessler psychological distress scale (K10) is particularly used. The results of the K10 can be used for further analysis to determine whether participation in the intervention leads to a decrease in psychological symptoms. Results: The results of the research show a general significant difference in the pretest and posttest results, but that it involves a small negative effect. This indicates that there is a greater degree of psychological problems after taking part in the intervention Psyfit. When looking at gender differences, the intervention has a greater negative effect on men compared to women. For minimal use (at least 20% made from one module of Psyfit) there is a significant effect, but in addition there seems to be a negative effectsize. For adherence (100% made from one module of Psyfit) there is no a significant difference found between the pretest and posttest. This result indicates that the psychological symptoms remained the same after completing the intervention. Besides that a small negative effect size is found, indicating that the symptoms after the intervention increased as well. However, a slightly smaller negative effect is found for adherence compared to people who have used the intervention in a minimal way. Therefore, adherence leads to a slightly more positive effect on the posttest compared to minimal use. However, these results are not in line with the expectations prior to starting this research. Conclusion: It has been found that after completing the intervention Psyfit higher scores for the presence of mental illness have been observed, which is especially true for men. It is true that a higher degree of adherence leads to a less negative effect. So more adherence leads to better results, but not to the extent that was expected in advance. It is difficult to determine what causes this negative effect. However, there is a study population in which more men participated, there is a higher age and more poorly educated, when compared to previous research into the intervention Psyfit. Regarding the proactive dissemination strategy, this has shown that this does provide a greater range, but does not cause a greater effect. During the study, there was a lot of failure and non-adherence. In future research, more emphasis should be placed on increasing the adherence and motivation to participate in the study.
Item Type:Essay (Master)
Faculty:BMS: Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences
Subject:77 psychology
Programme:Psychology MSc (66604)
Link to this item:https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/66283
Export this item as:BibTeX
EndNote
HTML Citation
Reference Manager

 

Repository Staff Only: item control page