A Text Messaging Intervention (StayWell at Home) to Counteract Depression and Anxiety During COVID-19 Social Distancing: Pre-Post Study

Background: Social distancing and stay-at-home orders are critical interventions to slow down person-to-person transmission of COVID-19. While these societal changes help contain the pandemic, they also have unintended negative consequences, including anxiety and depression. We developed StayWell, a daily skills-based SMS text messaging program, to mitigate COVID-19-related depression and anxiety symptoms among people who speak English and Spanish in the United States.

Objective: This paper describes the changes in StayWell participants' anxiety and depression levels after 60 days of exposure to skills-based SMS text messages.

Methods: We used self-administered, empirically supported web-based questionnaires to assess the demographic and clinical characteristics of StayWell participants. Anxiety and depression were measured using the 2-item Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD-2) scale and the 8-item Patient Health Questionnaire-8 (PHQ-8) scale at baseline and 60-day timepoints. We used 2-tailed paired t tests to detect changes in PHQ-8 and GAD-2 scores from baseline to follow-up measured 60 days later.

Results: The analytic sample includes 193 participants who completed both the baseline and 60-day exit questionnaires. At the 60-day time point, there were significant reductions in both PHQ-8 and GAD-2 scores from baseline. We found an average reduction of -1.72 (95% CI -2.35 to -1.09) in PHQ-8 scores and -0.48 (95% CI -0.71 to -0.25) in GAD-2 scores. These improvements translated to an 18.5% and 17.2% reduction in mean PHQ-8 and GAD-2 scores, respectively.

Conclusions: StayWell is an accessible, low-intensity population-level mental health intervention. Participation in StayWell focused on COVID-19 mental health coping skills and was related to improved depression and anxiety symptoms. In addition to improvements in outcomes, we found high levels of engagement during the 60-day intervention period. Text messaging interventions could serve as an important public health tool for disseminating strategies to manage mental health.

Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT04473599; https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04473599.

International registered report identifier (irrid): RR2-10.2196/23592.