‘Touching base’ on mental health can lead to significant improvements: study

Philadelphia — Automated text message reminders about a digital mental health platform helped decrease the symptoms of depression and anxiety among health care workers in a recent study from the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine.

The nine-month clinical trial involved nearly 1,300 health care workers, including doctors, nurses and technicians. A control group had open access to a web-based mental health platform, while an intervention group received platform access along with monthly reminder text messages on mental health and the availability of the platform.

Overall, self-reported depression symptom scores improved roughly 11% at six months and more than 22% at nine months.

For the intervention group, depression symptoms scores improved more than 20% after six months and 30% after nine months. By comparison, those percentages were 5 and 12 for the control group.

When it came to anxiety – measured with the Generalize Anxiety Disorder Assessment, or GAD-7 – the intervention group had greater improvements in the symptom score at both six and nine months: around 17% and 30%. In contrast, the control group saw a slight six-month improvement (4%) and a higher nine-month jump (13%).

Both of the nine-month scores for the intervention group were “just shy of indicating no symptoms,” according to a university press release.

“What we found shows that touching base with people, letting them know that help is available and easy to access, goes a long way toward maximizing digital mental health interventions and platforms, which leads to important, tangible results,” lead study author Anish Agarwal, an assistant professor of emergency medicine at Penn, said in the release.

The study was published online in the JAMA Network Open.