Developing an app-based behavioral intervention to help depressed individuals return to work

PROJECT SUMMARY Significance: The overarching goal of this proposal is to develop an intervention to help unemployed individuals with major depressive disorder (MDD) return to work. Individuals who lose their jobs are at risk for MDD and other psychiatric disorders. Because a core feature of MDD is decreased motivation, unemployed individuals with MDD can enter a `vicious cycle' where their depression leads to reduced motivation to seek work, which creates further financial hardship, which leads to worse depression and even suicide. The unprecedented impact that the COVID-19 pandemic has had on rates of depression and unemployment, has elucidated the clear need for interventions to help individuals with MDD return to work after getting laid off. Investigators: This STTR Fast Track grant brings together PeopleResults (a female-owned organizational development firm), diverse stakeholders (e.g., job seekers, community-based organizations), and Northwestern University researchers (e.g., psychologists, implementation and e-health scientists), to develop and test the efficacy of DRIVEN (Depression Return-to-work InterVEntioN). Innovation: DRIVEN is an innovative behavioral intervention that integrates evidenced-based strategies from cognitive-behavior therapy (e.g., behavioral activation techniques to improve positive affect and drive) with job-seeking and career counseling (e.g., interview coaching, how to customize job applications). DRIVEN will be a 6-week intervention largely delivered via a smartphone application (e.g., webinars, customized goals, with gamified features). However, given that e-health interventions are often plagued by high rates of attrition, DRIVEN will include multiple components designed to increase engagement, by increasing social support and accountability (e.g., biweekly live sessions with a job coach, email check-ins, gamified exercises, anonymous social media support platform). Our comprehensive commercialization plan also ensures that DRIVEN will reach job-seekers in need as it largely focuses on marketing to companies looking for outplacement services, i.e., resources provided by employers to recently laid off employees, in order to reduce the reputational fallout that companies risk following significant layoffs. Approach: Phase I will use user-centered design methodology (e.g., an advisory committee consisting of job-seekers, potential customers, experts in human resources) to design, develop, and alpha- and beta-test a prototype of DRIVEN. Phase II will test the efficacy of DRIVEN in a randomized controlled trial of 125 job seekers by comparing DRIVEN to a control condition consisting of self-guided job-seeking. Phase II will also utilize auto-regressive modelling with intensive longitudinal data to test for mediators of change (e.g., whether improvements in depression lead to greater job- seeking, and/or vice versa) Impact: DRIVEN will meet the high societal need resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic – helping the many unemployed Americans with MDD find meaningful and durable careers. While COVID-19 will (hopefully) be in the past by the end of this 3-year project, there will continue to be a need for interventions to help job-seekers with depression nimbly and successfully find work.