Improving Digital Mental Health Interventions: ENGAGEment as Mechanism of Impact
Digital Mental Health Interventions (DMHIs) are digital interventions that deliver evidence-based treatments via the Internet and apps for issues such as depression and anxiety. Although DMHIs show significant effectiveness in clinical research, the challenge arises during their implementation in practice due to high drop-out and non-adherence rates, limiting the effectiveness of DMHIs. This ERC-funded research project (ENGAGE) proposes that engagement is the main impact mechanism of DMHIs (EMI: Engagement as Mechanism of Impact).
The sub-projects included within the broader ENGAGE project are:
- Understand and measure real-time engagement with DMHIs (PhD project)
This PhD project aims to answer two questions: (1) how can we define what engagement with DMHIs is, and (2) how can we measure engagement in real-time. The project will reconceptualize engagement within the context of DMHIs and will bring more insight into the Behavioral-Cognitive-Affective (BCA) dimensions of engagement. We aim to yield a fine-grained understanding of real-time engagement and show the, until now unknown, relationship between the three dimensions of engagement, both on an individual level and over time. Together with more fine-grained, real-time measurement, this can already revolutionise the field of DMHIs, because, for the first time, we would have a continuous, unobtrusive measure that indicates, early on, whether or not the intervention that is used by an individual is expected to be effective. This entails huge possibilities for giving adequate, individualised care, by adapting DMHIs to individual, real-time needs.
Researchers involved: Kerem Dogan, Iris ten Klooster, Hanneke Kip, Maryam Amir Haeri, Saskia Kelders
- Identify and analyse the effect of strategies to influence individual engagement with DMHIs (PhD Project)
This project expands the toolbox of intervention developers to influence the mechanism of impact, on an individual level. This will be done by mapping and expanding the scope of technological and intervention components within DMHIs that can influence engagement and selecting the most promising strategies to increase each dimension of engagement. Instead of focusing on just one implementation of each strategy, the focus is on multiple implementations to be able to cater to individual differences. This will create a range of strategies that can be implemented in any DMHI, to increase engagement and thus effectiveness. The impact of the most promising engagement strategies on individuals will be studied, providing options for when an individual is less than optimally engaged on one or more dimensions.
Researchers: Isabella Cadoni, Sofia Bastoni, Nienke Beerlage - de Jong, Rúben De Freitas Gouveia, Saskia Kelders
- Study the relationship between intervention components, engagement, and outcomes within personalised and adaptive DMHIs to verify EMI (PostDoc Project)
The third project verifies EMI within DMHIs. The focus is on the main relationships of engagement (1) with intervention components; hypothesised that different components will lead to different engagement in individuals, but for each individual a fitting strategy can be chosen to optimise engagement; and (2) with outcomes; hypothesised that optimised engagement throughout the intervention leads to better outcomes. To reach this goal, EMI will be used to transform regular, static and one-size-fits-all DMHIs to personalised and adaptive interventions. Iterative cycles of development and testing of personalised and adaptive DMHIs will be used. In each cycle, the complexity of the measurement of engagement and the adaptivity of the DMHI will be increased, thereby integrating outcomes of both project 1 and project 2. This will provide proof of EMI and will show the value of leveraging EMI to create more effective personalised and adaptive DMHIs.
Researchers: Sofia Bastoni, Saskia Kelders
Meet the team!
Isabella is a PhD candidate working on strategies to influence individual engagement with DMHIs. Got questions or want to collaborate? Connect directly via email or LinkedIn.
Kerem works as a PhD Candidate specializing on conceptualizing and measuring engagement with DMHIs. Have questions or interested in collaboration? Contact him directly via email or LinkedIn.
Iris is the data scientist working on conceptualizing and measuring engagement with DMHIs. You can contact her for questions and collaboration ideas via email or LinkedIn.
Sofia works as a PostDoc on verifying engagement as the impact mechanism of DMHI effectiveness. Curious or looking to collaborate? Drop a line via email or LinkedIn.
Saskia is the Principle Investigator of the ENGAGE project. Feel free to contact her via email or LinkedIn if you have any ideas for collaboration or curious of what we are working on.