Nearly half of all college students have a diagnosable mental health problem. College counseling centers (CCCs) are faced with increasing demands for services from Universities, students, and parents to meet the treatment needs of their students, in the context of increasingly severe cases and declining resources. Innovative, cost effective solutions are needed that can improve treatment effectiveness with a range of presenting problems while reducing counselor workloads.~The current project seeks to meet these needs by building a user-informed guided self-help version of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), an evidence-based transdiagnostic therapy that has been found to effectively treat a range of mental health problems by targeting experiential avoidance, the tendency to avoid unwanted emotions and negative thoughts.After the program has been built in the first stage of the study, the investigators will then test this program at several CCCs throughout the country. An ACT program would provide a means of implementing effective treatment for the range of problems encountered in the CCC setting, while the online guided self-help format would reduce counselors' workload for each client, improving cost effectiveness and reducing waiting lists. This product would both treat students through a series of self-help modules and train CCC counselors in how to implement the guided self-help ACT intervention.~For the current phase (Phase II) of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant, 8 student self-help sessions will be developed, as well as a counselor portal with counselor training sessions to review students' use of the program and to receive training on implementing ACT guided self-help.~The current study will consist of two stages: Stage 1 will study user preferences and testing of the program as it is developed, and Stage 2 will be a randomized trial of the program in several CCCs.~Stage 1 will consist of ongoing interviews with a total of 6 students, 7 counselors and 1 director, who will be contacted intermittently throughout the program to participate in web-conference interviews in which they provide feedback on the current development, and test individual components of the program. Development will be iterative, and will be updated and adjusted based on the feedback from these focused interviews.~Stage 2 will consist of a randomized trial of 40 counselors using the program, and a nested program evaluation of 400 students (10 students per counselor). Counselors will be randomized to either the ACT on College Life program, or to a control website. After completing the condition's training, counselors will invite students to participate in the site to which the counselor has been randomized. Participants in both conditions will complete assessments at baseline, post, and follow-up. The study will examine the feasibility, efficacy, and acceptability of the program with both students and counselors.
This study will develop and then test a web-based guided self-help version of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) to be utilized at college counseling centers (CCCs). ACT is an evidence-based transdiagnostic therapy found to effectively treat a range of psychological problems. An ACT program would provide a means of implementing effective treatment for the range of problems in the CCC setting, while the guided self-help format would reduce counselors' workload, improving cost-effectiveness and reducing waiting lists. This would both treat students and train counselors in how to implement the ACT intervention.