Effects of an online self-help intervention on university students’ mental health during COVID-19: a non-randomized controlled pilot study (Preprint)

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BACKGROUND The COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting abrupt changes in daily life and ways of learning had a significant impact on university students, in particular on their mental health. However, little is known on how to prevent and/or reduce its impact to date. Prior to COVID-19, some studies have shown that online stress management programs were successful enough to improve students' mental health and stress adjustment strategies, suggesting that these interventions should be further developed during the pandemic. OBJECTIVE Our study explored the effects on mental health of an online self-help program which targeted stress management and learning. METHODS A non-randomized controlled study was initially conducted with 347 university students. Our final sample was composed of 114 participants distributed in two groups: the intervention group (participants who took part in the program) and the control group (participants who did not take part in the program). The variables measured were: anxiety and depressive symptoms (HADS), academic burnout (MBI-GSS), learned helplessness (LHQ), and coping strategies (Brief-COPE). Measurements were performed at the baseline (T0) and at 8 weeks (T1) after the baseline. RESULTS Means comparisons between T0 and T1 reveal a reduction in anxiety symptoms (rrb = 0.49, P = .008) and learned helplessness (rrb = 0.51, P = .04) in the intervention group while no such results were observed in the control group. CONCLUSIONS Our pilot study reports promising effects of our online self-help program on students' psychological state. Further research will be needed to confirm the beneficial effect of this type of program on university students. CLINICALTRIAL