Mindful of yourself: the initial evaluation of an online health promotion programme for university students

As students are vulnerable to mental disorders, interventions for promoting mental health and well-being are urgently needed. Third-wave behavioural therapy programmes (e.g., ACT and MSC) have shown promising results in addressing these issues. The online health promotion programme SAM was developed in a multistage process using a participatory design with students at the University of Klagenfurt, Austria. The name SAM was derived from the German terms for the three main components of programme content: self-care (Selbstfürsorge), mindfulness (Achtsamkeit), and self-compassion (Mitgefühl). It was hypothesised that SAM would (1) increase students' mindfulness, self-compassion, and well-being and (2) decrease levels of depression, anxiety, and stress.

Participants were randomly assigned to either the SAM (n = 53) or the low-dose educational group (n = 65), both receiving basic content on nutrition, exercise, relaxation, and stress reduction. Students in the SAM group received a self-administered 21-day intervention, and outcomes were assessed using questionnaires.

A total of 118 students participated in both the baseline assessment and postassessment. A mixed-model MANOVA yielded nonsignificant interaction and group effects but a significant time effect in the expected direction for most outcomes. Across both conditions, participants showed improvements in well-being, and self-compassion as well as decreases in depression, anxiety, and stress symptoms at postassessment. Whilst no significant group-level time effect was observed for mindfulness, Reliable Change Index (RCI) analyses indicated clinically meaningful improvement in mindfulness for 13.6% of participants. The highest rates of reliable improvement were found for well-being (21.2%) and self-compassion (20.3%). However, RCI analyses also identified clinically meaningful deterioration in a subset of participants, particularly for depression (19.5%) and stress (13.7%), highlighting substantial heterogeneity in individual responses despite relatively modest changes at the group level.

Although no differential effects of the SAM programme were observed, the findings highlight the potential impact of small interventions and offer valuable insights for future research. However, the SAM programme could benefit from these insights and is currently under revision.