Technology Enabled Mental Health Intervention for Individuals in the Criminal Justice System

In the United States, over 60% of the 2.2 million people who are incarcerated struggle with mental health problems. Currently, correctional facilities are limited in their ability to provide care. As technology-enabled interventions for mood disorders have demonstrated efficacy outside of correctional facilities, the investigators propose to build and test a technology-enabled mood disorder treatment intervention for individuals who are incarcerated.

Study Overview

• Status: Completed
• Conditions: Depression; Anxiety; Mood
• Intervention / Treatment: Behavioral: Technology-Enabled CBT Treatment

Detailed Description

In the United States, over 2.2 million people are incarcerated. While these numbers are alarming, even more distressing is the rapid growth in the number of mentally ill individuals caught in this system. Within any given year, approximately 73% of females and 55% of males in jail will experience a mental health problem. This results in the criminal justice system serving as a de facto mental health treatment facility for hundreds of thousands of individuals, despite constrained funding and a paucity of qualified providers and interventions. More than one in five jails have no access to mental health services.

There is strong evidence that technology-enabled interventions for the treatment of mood disorders are efficacious and cost effective. Technology-enabled mental health care has many strengths, including the ability to deliver treatment reliably, increase privacy for those seeking services, and provide a scalable evidence-based intervention at a lower cost than traditional face-to-face services.

Edovo has previously developed secure tablet hardware, protected networks and a learning management system that deliver static content in the areas of academic, job skill, and life skill programming to those incarcerated. The aim of this project is to develop and demonstrate the feasibility of a dynamic intervention for the treatment of inmates with mood disorders utilizing the Edovo system. A user centered design approach will be used to modify existing evidence-based, technology-enabled mood interventions to be appropriate for the incarcerated population. Software will be modified to run the intervention on the existing Edovo system. The resulting intervention will be tested in a sample of inmates for an initial clinical signal. The development of such a technology would help correctional facilities more effectively meet their treatment requirements and rehabilitation goals.

• Study Type: Interventional
• Enrollment (Actual): 50
• Phase: Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

Study Locations

• United States
  • Illinois
    • Eureka, Illinois, United States, 61530
      • Woodford County Jail
  • Massachusetts
    • Billerica, Massachusetts, United States, 01862
      • Middlesex County Jail

Participation Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

• Ages Eligible for Study: 14 years and older (Adult, Older Adult)
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: No
• Genders Eligible for Study: All

Description

Inclusion Criteria

• Incarcerated Middlesex County Jail or Woodford County jails;
• Has access to the Edovo tablet;
• is at least 18 years of age;
• Is able to speak and read English Exclusion Criteria
• None

Study Plan

How is the study designed?

Design Details

• Primary Purpose: Treatment
• Allocation: N/A
• Interventional Model: Single Group Assignment
• Masking: None (Open Label)

Number of Arms

1

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm	Intervention / Treatment
Experimental: Open-Label Trial Arm; Will receive 4 weeks of technology-enabled CBT treatment.	Behavioral: Technology-Enabled CBT Treatment; CBT-based modules delivered via tablet over 4 weeks.

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Beck Depression Inventory (BDI)	Inventory of depression items	4 weeks
Generalized Anxiety Disorder - 7 (GAD-7)	Inventory of anxiety items	4 weeks
PTSD Checklist-Civilian Version (PCL-17)	Inventory of PTSD items	4 weeks

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
User satisfaction - users	How much users like the module	4 weeks

Collaborators and Investigators

• Sponsor: Jail Education Solutions, Inc.
• Collaborators: University of Illinois at Chicago

Study record dates

Study Major Dates

• Study Start (Actual): October 1, 2018
• Primary Completion (Actual): December 31, 2018
• Study Completion (Actual): January 15, 2019

Study Registration Dates

• First Submitted: April 4, 2017
• First Submitted That Met QC Criteria: April 4, 2017
• First Posted (Actual): April 10, 2017

Study Record Updates

• Last Update Posted (Actual): January 27, 2020
• Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria: January 23, 2020
• Last Verified: January 1, 2020

More Information

Terms related to this study

• Keywords: depression; CBT; technology; jail; prison
• Additional Relevant MeSH Terms: Behavioral Symptoms; Depression
• Other Study ID Numbers: MHRP-MOOD-001

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

• Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?: No

Drug and device information, study documents

• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product: No
• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product: No