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25. Personalization of User Interface of MindTrails to Increase User Engagement and Reduce Attrition

Presenters Name: 
Leigh Mante
Co Presenters Name: 
Primary Research Mentor: 
Laura Barnes
Secondary Research Mentor: 
Anna Baglione
Session: 
1
Grant Program Recipient: 
USOAR Program
Abstract: 

Approximately one in five adults in the United States have been diagnosed with some form of mental illness, but less than half received treatment in this past year (NAMI, 2019). The MindTrails Calm Thinking project was developed by an interdisciplinary Systems Engineering and Psychology research team to reduce barriers towards receiving mental health care through its readily available and cost-effective platform. MindTrails integrates cognitive bias modification for interpretation (CBM-I) in its training sessions which aims to reframe thinking patterns of highly anxious individuals when they respond to stressors. eHealth interventions generally struggle with user retention, and MindTrails is no exception. In order to reduce attrition (dropout) rates, I collaborated with a Systems Engineering capstone team to research strategies to improve engagement capacities of eHealth interventions with the goal of adapting these methods to further personalize MindTrails. Following the conduction of a literature review, we designed prototypes of a new mobile interface for MindTrails. This interface includes options for users to pre-select a domain of anxiety to work on (e.g. relationships or health) as well as a journal component for users to document their goals. We hypothesize that the mobile version of MindTrails will increase the efficacy of the program and allow users to experience a more engaging mental health intervention.