Marked increases in mental health services utilisation across university settings mean that students often spend long periods waiting for evaluation and treatment.
To assess whether digital unguided self-help delivered while waiting for face-to-face therapy could reduce anxiety and depression and improve functioning in university students.
We retrospectively analysed routinely collected data from the student mental health service at the University of Padua, Italy. From June 2022, all students waiting for clinical evaluation and treatment received a self-help stress management booklet (The World Health Organization’s Doing What Matters in Time of Stress (DWM)). The clinical evaluation included depression (Patient Health Questionnaire-9), anxiety (Generalised Anxiety Disorder-7) and functional impairment (Work and Social Adjustment Scale). Single-group interrupted time series (ITS) analyses compared outcomes in users contacting the service between October 2021 and 23 June 2022 (pre-intervention) and, respectively, between 24 June 2022 and 18 November 2023 (post-intervention).
Seven hundred and forty-nine Italian students (77% women, median age 23 years) were included; of these, 411 (55%) received the intervention and 338 (45%) did not. ITS indicated that the intervention introduction coincided with immediate and sharp decreases in depression (level change, β = −2.26, 95% CI −3.89, −0.64), anxiety (β = −1.50, 95% CI −3.89, −0.65) and impaired functioning (β = −2.66, 95% CI −4.64, −0.60), all largely maintained over time.
In the absence of a control group, no causal inferences about intervention effects could be drawn. DWM should be studied as a promising candidate for bridging waiting time for face-to-face treatment.