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BACKGROUND While it is well known that adolescents frequently turn to their friends for support around mental health and substance use problems, there are currently no evidence-based digital programs to support them to do this. OBJECTIVE To evaluate the efficacy of the Mind your Mate program, a digital peer support program, in improving mental health symptoms, reducing the uptake of substance use, and increasing help-seeking. The Mind your Mate program consists of an online 40-minute classroom lesson and a companion smartphone mobile application (app). The active control group received school-based health education as usual. METHODS A cluster randomized controlled trial (RCT) was conducted with 12 secondary schools and 166 students (mean age=15.3 years, SD=0.41, 46% female, 80% born in Australia). Participants completed self-reported questionnaires assessing symptoms of mental health (depression, anxiety, and psychological distress), substance use (alcohol and other drug use) and help-seeking measures at baseline, 6- and 12-month follow-up. RESULTS Students who received the Mind your Mate program had reduced growth in depressive symptoms over a 12-month period, compared to controls (b=-1.86, 95% CI=3.73 – 0.02). Promisingly, anxiety symptoms decreased among students in the intervention group; however, these reductions did not meet statistical significance thresholds. No significant differences were observed in relation to psychological distress or help-seeking. CONCLUSIONS A novel digital health intervention, the Mind your Mate program, reduced depression symptoms in adolescents over 12-months compared to a control condition. While the current results are encouraging there is a need to continue to refine, develop and evaluate innovative applied approaches to the prevention of mental disorders in real-world settings. CLINICALTRIAL The study was prospectively registered on the Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry (#ACTRN12620000753954). https://www.anzctr.org.au/ INTERNATIONAL REGISTERED REPORT RR2-10.2196/26796 |
