Clinical Research Directory

A Grief Support App for Adults Experiencing Bereavement

Sponsor: Medical Research Council Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit

Summary

Losing a loved one is a difficult experience. Some people may require psychological support, but even for those who do not, grief can often feel overwhelming. Many bereaved adults report there not being enough support that is easily available for them. Some researchers have suggested that online interventions, such as phone applications (apps) could be a good way to make support easier to access. Apps can also allow people to access support anonymously. Apps can also help by prompting people to practice different skills. This means that they can test them out in their real life and learn how to best integrate them. This type of app might be particularly helpful for grief as grief does not always stay consistent but rather changes in intensity throughout the day and year. The investigators have developed a grief app called Daybreak. The app was developed together with grief experts and bereaved adults. The app includes information about grief, writing exercises, short exercises, a registry of resources for grief support and a place to store memories of the deceased person. In addition, the app prompts twice daily to answer two questions about the grief and do a small exercise. The investigators now wish to see how well the app works. To achieve this, each participant will be randomly sorted into two groups. Both groups will have access to the app for four weeks. One group will immediately access the app for four weeks and then have a four-week waiting period (eight weeks in total), while the other group start with the waiting period and then gets access to the app for four weeks (also eight weeks). Different grief-related symptoms will be measured at the beginning, middle and end of the experiment, as well as asking all participants to rate the feasibility and acceptability of the app itself. The researchers can also see how often the app was used and if people responded to the questions in the app. In the end, researchers would inspect if participants liked the app, if they used the app regularly and if the app changed any of the grief-related difficulties.

Official title: DayBreak: A Pilot Randomised Trial of a Grief Support App for Adults Experiencing Bereavement

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