The Feasibility of Online Mindfulness for Stroke Sufferers - Version 1
Research type
Research Study
Full title
The feasibility of an online mindfulness course – bemindfulonline.com – on stroke sufferers’ perceived stress, anxiety, depression, health and quality of life.
IRAS ID
211217
Contact name
Victoria Singh
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Surrey
Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier
orcid.org/0000-0003-4158-2599 , Orcid ID
Duration of Study in the UK
2 years, 1 months, 1 days
Research summary
Anxiety and depression is common to those post-stroke with about a third of stroke sufferers experiencing one or both. It is felt these are currently underdiagnosed and undertreated. There is a call for more accessible interventions.
Mindfulness based interventions have shown considerable efficacy in treating anxiety and depression and there is growing body of evidence of the benefits of mindfulness for those post-stroke.
This study will be the first to look at an instructor-led online mindfulness intervention for stroke sufferers. As a feasibility study it aims to investigate whether such an intervention is acceptable to patients and if so, can a larger scale study be done. The larger scale study will investigate whether the intervention is beneficial in reducing anxiety and depression. This study will assess the design and intervention format required to test this.
Those who have had a stroke and are eligible to participate in the online mindfulness course will be invited to take part by their stroke specialist nurse. The 10 session course teaches participants mindfulness skills through audio and visual clips. Each week the participants will be asked to complete one of each as well as do an informal exercise in their own time. It will take approximately 6-8 weeks to complete the course.
The study will collect information from participants via online questionnaires before starting, during and at the end of the course. The questionnaires will ask about anxiety, depression, thinking style, health, quality of life and perceived stress levels. We will not evaluate the outcomes but instead look at response rates and calculate standard deviations of the measures used to help us calculate the sample size needed for the larger study. We will also look at the willingness of clinicians to recruit participants.
Additionally, the study will involve interviews with a subset of participants to assess their experience of the study design and to explore the acceptability of the online mindfulness intervention in this population.REC name
London - Westminster Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
17/LO/0546
Date of REC Opinion
3 May 2017
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion