A scalable mental health intervention for depressive symptoms: evidence from a randomized controlled trial and large-scale real-world studies.
rct · Level II
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 40750656.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41746-025-01888-5 and PMC identifier 12317073.
- Licence recorded as CC BY-NC-ND.
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Abstract
Depressive symptoms pose a serious global threat to well-being, highlighting the need for scalable mental health interventions. E-mental health interventions offer promising population-level solutions, yet few are grounded in theory or tested on large samples. This study utilizes an innovative e-mental health intervention based on the Extended Process Model of Emotion Regulation and examines the effectiveness of this theory-based intervention across a randomized controlled trial (RCT, N = 187; Chinese Clinical Trial Registry: ChiCTR2400081964; registration date: March 18th, 2024) and two extensive real-world studies (N<sub>study 2</sub> = 11,554, N<sub>study 3</sub> = 44,018) conducted with adults in China. The RCT confirmed the efficacy of this intervention, and both of the real-world e-mental health intervention studies showed a decrease in depressive symptoms (35-36%) and an increase in well-being (14-16%) over 21 days. These findings highlight the potential of theory-based e-mental health interventions as scalable solutions for early depression intervention and prevention, offering substantial societal and economic advantages.