Compliance with Ethical Standards All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. Informed consent was obtained, and participants were informed about the study, its content, and volunarity of participation. Responses were anonymized and stored in anonymous form on a secure server. The Study was approved by the Danish Data Protection Agency. The study was exempt from further ethical evaluations following the rules and regulations as set forth by the Scientific Ethical Committees of Denmark.
In most industrialized societies, including Denmark where the current study was conducted, the divorce rate exceeds 40% (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2016; European Commission, 2015; Statistics Denmark, 2017). Divorce has consistently been found to be among the most stressful life events and is often perceived as a prolonged stressful situation by divorcees (
Background: Two decades of divorce research has consistently documented adverse mental and physical health effects of divorce. Responding to calls for evidence-based online divorce interventions, this study tests effects of the "Cooperation after Divorce" (CAD) digital intervention platform on divorcees' mental and physical health. Methods: Randomised control trial 12-month longitudinal study using a sample of 1,856 newly divorced Danes. Mental and physical health were measured using the SF-36 at baseline and 3, 6, and 12 months from baseline. Intervention effects were investigated using linear mixed effect models and Cohen's (d) for effect sizes. Results: The study found significant treatment effects of the CAD intervention on mental and physical health. These effects were evident across all eight health domains constituting the mental and physical health components. The study also found that the intervention group had significantly better mental health than the control group at subsequent 6-and 12-month assessments from baseline while for physical health, the intervention group had significantly better physical health at the 6-month assessment from baseline only. Conclusion: The results indicate that digital solutions allowing for individually tailored user experiences may hold great potential in reducing well-known adverse health effects of divorce. Practitioner's points: • The study finds highly significant treatment effects of the "CAD" digital divorce intervention on mental and physical health indicating that online interventions may be successfully integrated into help offered to divorcees post-divorce.
Objective: For many, the divorce process is associated with various degrees of hostility. Such hostility may have implications for a variety of interpersonal relationships, including relationships with the ex-partner, extended family, friends, and coworkers. The current study presents the results of a 1-year longitudinal randomized controlled trial of the “Cooperation after Divorce” (CAD) online intervention platform for adults going through a divorce. Method: Participants included 1,856 divorcees who began the intervention, on average, within 1 week of legal divorce. Participants responded to the Symptom Checklist-90–Revised Hostility subscale at baseline, and at 3, 6, and 12 months postdivorce. Results: Data analyses consisted of mixed-effects modeling and one-sample t tests. The study found that the intervention platform significantly reduced hostility among divorcees over a 1-year period, with an effect that was medium in size. Of note, there were no gender differences in the reduction in hostility over the 1-year period, suggesting that the intervention was equally beneficial to men and women. Moreover, after 1 year, in the intervention group, but not the control group, levels of hostility were reduced to normative national hostility levels. Conclusion: The results suggest that recently divorced people benefit from the online intervention platform in terms of significantly reduced hostility and suggest that the intervention platform may thereby offer long-term public health benefits given previously found associations between higher levels of hostility and health.
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