Feasibility and preliminary efficacy of a public mobile app to reduce symptoms of postdisaster distress in adolescent wildfire survivors: Sonoma rises.

Abstract

In October 2017, Northern California experienced devastating and historic wildfires leaving the community in need of support to foster emotional resilience during the recovery process. Adolescents represent a particularly vulnerable population in the wake of disaster, and digital mental health interventions may hold promise for reaching teens at scale. The present study examined the feasibility and efficacy of a mobile mental health app for disaster, Sonoma Rises. A multiple-baseline single-case experimental design (SCED) utilizing a research-enabled version of the app was employed with seven adolescents who experienced significant damage to their homes and schools in the wildfires. Participants completed daily mood ratings, weekly measures of posttraumatic stress symptoms, internalizing and externalizing symptoms, psychosocial functioning, and then pre–post-measures of anxiety, depression, wellbeing, sleep, academic engagement, and perceived social support as well as quantitative and qualitative measures of intervention satisfaction and feasibility. Sonoma Rises was found to be feasible in terms of engagement, satisfaction, and likelihood of recommending to a friend. During the study, another wildfire occurred and all participants underwent a prolonged mandated evacuation and were subject to a series of extended power outages. Uptake of the publicly available version of the Sonoma Rises app among the general population was modest but engagement among users was sustained. Lessons learned are offered to contribute to the science and practice of building, disseminating, and implementing digital tools to conduct more equitable disaster mental health outreach and research.

Mobile Apps to Support Mental Health Response in Natural Disasters: Scoping Review

“…Of the 1532 papers retrieved from the searches, 976 unique papers had their titles and abstracts screened after deduplication. A total of 38 papers were moved to full-text screening, and data were extracted from 5 papers [ 30 - 34 ] ( Figure 1 ). Table 1 shows the summary of the details of the papers.…”

“…Of the 5 studies included in this review, 3 (60%) were conducted in the United States [ 30 , 31 , 34 ], while 2 (40%) were conducted in South Korea [ 32 , 33 ]. All studies used different study designs.…”

“…All studies used different study designs. A total of 3 studies used a quasi-experimental design—the first, a single group postexperiment with 22 participants [ 32 ]; the second, a multiple-baseline single case experimental design with 7 participants [ 30 ], while the third study used a 1-group pre- and posttest design with 318 participants [ 31 ]. The Training for Life Skills (TLS) app study had only a posttest following the use of the app [ 32 ]; the other 2 had baseline and follow-up measurements with the Sonoma Rises app study having, in addition, preintervention and postintervention measurements.…”

Rising from the ashes by expanding access to community care after disaster: An origin story of the Wildfire Mental Health Collaborative and preliminary findings.

“…A multipronged approach to community-based mental health was employed and two interventions were customized and implemented based on community input, existing research literature, anticipated scalability, accessibility, and level of care needed: (a) trauma-informed mind–body program, (b) training counselors in the delivery of SPR. A mobile mental health app, Sonoma Rises, was also developed and evaluated with teenage wildfire survivors and this work is described in Heinz et al (2021). The two programs are described next and preliminary findings are presented.…”

Responding to individuals and communities after disasters and other traumatic events: An introduction.

“…A digital approach for an important and particularly vulnerable population within the community (adolescents) is presented by Heinz, Wiltsey-Stirman, Jaworski, et al (2022) as the lead paper in this section. Originally responding to the October 2017 Northern California Wildfires, this article presents the feasibility and efficacy data from preliminary findings of the mobile mental health app “Sonoma Rises.” The characteristics of the app are described and the small sample that originally facilitated the collection of pilot data are presented.…”