A multisite, quasiexperimental trial of a college course to support student mental health during the COVID‐19 pandemic

Abstract

ObjectiveThe purpose of this study was to investigate the acceptability, appropriateness, feasibility, and preliminary effectiveness of a three‐credit college Wellness and Resilience Course (WRC) for improving student mental health and well‐being outcomes in the context of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) pandemic.MethodUndergraduate students aged 18–24 years old on five campuses in Western Pennsylvania or West Virginia who had either enrolled in the WRC (n = 81) or were attending university as usual (i.e., not enrolled in the WRC; n = 171) participated in surveys at baseline (beginning of semester), end of semester, and 3‐month follow‐up during the Spring and Fall 2020 semesters.ResultsOverall, students rated the WRC as acceptable, appropriate, and feasible. From baseline to the end of semester, students who received the WRC reported significant improvements in psychological flexibility (d = 0.30), mindfulness (d = 0.42), distress tolerance (d = 0.36), and use of dysfunctional and adaptive coping skills (d = 0.32), compared with students who did not receive the WRC. At follow‐up, all gains remained statistically significant and students who received the WRC additionally reported significant improvements in stress (d = 0.44) and life satisfaction (d = 0.35) compared with students who did not receive the WRC.ConclusionsThese findings offer preliminary evidence that college courses focused on mental wellness may be an important component of campus strategies to increase universal access to mental health support and skills. This study was registered on clinicaltrials.gov on April 8, 2020.

The Impact of Resilience Interventions on University Students’ Mental Health and Well-Being: A Systematic Review

“…A range of measures was used for each of these constructs, summarised in Table 2. The most common measures of depression were the Beck depression inventory [93] (BDI) [50,70,74,76], the patient health questionnaire [94] (PHQ)-4 or -9 [48,55,68,86,88], and the depression anxiety stress scales [95] (DASS) [51,52,57,[59][60][61]84,91]. The most common measures for anxiety were the generalised anxiety disorder assessment [96] (GAD-7) [48,62,63], state-trait anxiety inventory [97] (STAI) [50,76,89,90], and DASS [52,57,[59][60][61]84].…”

“…In addition to the outcomes relating to mental health and well-being, several studies measured resilience using a specific resilience measure (n = 18) [51][52][53]58,61,63,64,66,68,69,74,77,83,84,87,89,91]. It was most commonly assessed with the Connor Davidson resilience scale [100](CD-RISC; n = 10) [52,53,63,64,66,67,69,74,84,89], followed by the resilience scale [101] (n = 3) [78,84,88], and the brief resilience scale [101] (n =4) [58,83,87,91]; one study used the cognitive hardiness scale [102] (n = 1), [46].…”

“…Eight studies implemented a non-randomised controlled trial (NRCT) study design [53,58,62,77,79,80,82,87]. Seventeen studies employed a pre-post without control group study design [48,50,51,59,60,[64][65][66][68][69][70]83,84,86,88,89,91], and twenty-two studies adopted a randomised controlled trial (RCT) study design [45][46][47]49,52,[54][55][56][57]61,63,67,[71][72][73][74][75][76]78,81,85,90].…”

“…Most of the studies recruited undergraduate students (n = 38) [45][46][47][49][50][51][53][54][55][56][57]59,[61][62][63][64][65][66][67][68][69]71,72,[74][75][76][77][78][79][80][81][82]84,85,87,88,90,91]. Only four studies recruited graduate students [48,58,69,83] and a subset did not specify, but all those not specifying focused on medical students [60,70,73,86,89]; as such, the level may not have been reported as medical degrees can include a typical undergraduate degree within the higher medical degree.…”

“…The most common type of intervention was mindfulness (n = 18) [47,49,53 Across all intervention types, there was a range of modes of delivery, although online interventions were more frequent in recent studies, as may be expected due to COVID and advances in technology. For skills-based interventions, nine used face-to-face delivery [45,50,63,[74][75][76]78,80,82] and five used online delivery [51,52,59,66,68]. For mindfulness interventions, ten used face-to-face delivery [47,53,60,67,69,71,77,81,87,89] and eight used online delivery [49,[55][56][57]72,86,88,90].…”