An ecological momentary compassion-focused intervention for enhancing resilience in help-seeking youths: a pilot study

Abstract

Background: Digital interventions offer new avenues for low-threshold prevention and treatment in youth. Ecological momentary interventions (EMIs) represent a powerful approach that allows for adaptive, real-time, and real-world delivery of intervention components in daily life. Compassion-focused interventions may be particularly amenable to translation into an EMI to strengthen emotional resilience and modifying putative risk mechanisms in daily lives of young help-seeking individuals. Objective: To investigate initial therapeutic effects, feasibility, and safety of a novel, accessible, transdiagnostic, ecological momentary, compassion-focused intervention for improving emotional resilience to stress (‘EMIcompass’). Methods: In an uncontrolled phase I pilot study, help-seeking youths with psychotic, depressive, and/or anxiety symptoms were offered the EMIcompass intervention, which consisted of three sessions with a trained psychologist and a 3-week EMI administered through a mobile health app. Results: In total, ten individuals (Mage=20.3 years) were included in the study. Reduced stress sensitivity, momentary negative affect and psychotic experiences as well as increased positive affect were found at post-intervention and 4-week follow-up. Further, reductions in psychotic, anxiety, and depressive symptoms of medium to large effect size were found (r=0.30-0.65). Most participants reported to be satisfied (80%) and burden of app usage to be low (70-90%). No adverse events were observed. Conclusion: Our findings provide initial evidence on beneficial effects, feasibility, and safety of the EMIcompass intervention in help-seeking youth. A feasibility randomised controlled trial is warranted to establish efficacy.

Ecological Momentary Mood, Resilience, and Mental Health Status as Predictors of Quality of Life Among Young Adults Under Stress: A Structural Equation Modeling Analysis

“…In addition, female adolescents show greater variability in EMA of mood compared with male adolescents ( 46 , 47 ). Recent studies have further shown that daily positive affect is associated with higher QoL and lower depressive and anxiety symptoms, through the enhancement of psychological resilience ( 48 , 49 ).…”

Digitale Versorgungsformen zur Personalisierung der stationsäquivalenten Behandlung

“…Erste Ergebnisse zu EMIs wie ACT-DL ("acceptance and commitmenttherapyin daily life"; [34]) und EMIcompass ("ecological momentary intervention on selfcompassion"; [26]) sind vielversprechend und zeigen, dass therapeutische Prinzipien und Inhalte erfolgreich ins alltägliche Leben übersetzt werden können und eine hohe Machbarkeit, Akzeptanz und initiale therapeutische Effekte aufweisen. Eine weitere EMI, die die Steigerung des Selbstwertgefühls junger Menschen mit kindlicher Traumatisierung zum Ziel hat, wird derzeit -wie auch ACT-DL und EMIcompass -in einer randomisierten kontrollierten Studie untersucht [7].…”

The effects of a novel, transdiagnostic, hybrid ecological momentary intervention for improving resilience in youth (EMIcompass): study protocol for an exploratory randomized controlled trial

“…The first three sessions are based on elements of compassion-focused therapy (CFT) [68]. In line with our pilot study [53], CFT principles and techniques are introduced in these guided sessions. The first session aims to familiarize participants with the app offering the EMI.…”

“…There is evidence that stress reactivity is elevated in individuals with higher familial or psychometric risk, individuals with an Ultra-High Risk (UHR) state for psychosis, first-episode psychosis (FEP), severe and enduring psychosis [42][43][44][45], as well as with depressive disorder [46][47][48], mania and bipolar disorder [49][50][51]. Moreover, there is some evidence to suggest that differential reactivity to momentary stressors may reflect a risk and resilience mechanism [44,[52][53][54]. Heightened interpersonal sensitivity is another putative transdiagnostic psychological mechanism, which has been characterized by an enduring sense of feeling vulnerable in the presence of others [43,55].…”

“…Building on this work, we have recently set out to develop a novel, accessible, transdiagnostic, compassion-focused, hybrid intervention for enhancing resilience in youth with early mental health problems, i.e., the EMIcompass intervention [53], which consist of an EMI plus face-toface training sessions. While there is preliminary evidence on the feasibility and initial therapeutic effects of the EMIcompass intervention from an uncontrolled pilot study [53], robust evidence on the underlying mechanisms, feasibility, and initial signals of efficacy of EMIcompass from an exploratory trial is pending.…”