Online Positive Emotion Skills Intervention for Symptoms of Depression

Major depressive disorder affects over 120 million people worldwide. Only 50% of Americans
with depression receive adequate treatment, and one-third of those receiving treatment do not
benefit. In this pilot project investigators will bring together two approaches that have the
promise to reach large numbers of depression sufferers: a skills-based intervention for
increasing positive affect and experiences in depressed individuals, delivered in an
inexpensive self-paced mobile format. The study will make use of smartphone technology to
improve conventional outcome measurement via in-the-moment emotion sampling and mobile
assessment of heart rate variability, a predictor of cardiac health that may mediate some of
the health effects of depression. The aims are: 1) Retool the existing web-based positive
emotion intervention for use on smartphones, with innovative exercises that help participants
bring the skills they are learning into real-life situations; 2) Perform a small feasibility
trial of the mobile intervention on individuals with clinical depression recruited online 3)
Eventually incorporate feedback from the small feasibility trial to improve the online
intervention and conduct a full randomized trial on a larger scale