Clinical Trial Details
— Status: Not yet recruiting
Administrative data
| NCT number |
NCT06287216 |
| Other study ID # |
2024001 |
| Secondary ID |
|
| Status |
Not yet recruiting |
| Phase |
N/A
|
| First received |
|
| Last updated |
|
| Start date |
February 29, 2024 |
| Est. completion date |
April 30, 2024 |
Study information
| Verified date |
February 2024 |
| Source |
The Royal Ottawa Mental Health Centre |
| Contact |
n/a |
| Is FDA regulated |
No |
| Health authority |
|
| Study type |
Interventional
|
Clinical Trial Summary
The mental hygiene challenge is a Royal Ottawa Health Care Group led initiative to engage the
staff, clients and community members to attend to their mental well-being by way of
practicing mental hygiene activities for 10 min on a daily basis, throughout the month of
March. Participants are encouraged to choose one or many of the practices recommended and do
them for about 10 minutes a day. Participants are encouraged to make it their own, in that
they can combine the practice or tailor them in a way that suits them best. When signing up
for the challenge, participants receive free access to a toolkit with brief outlines and
instructional videos on various mental hygiene practices.
We also encourage participants to divide the 10 minutes in whatever way best works for them,
such as 10 minutes all at once, 5 minutes twice, or even 2 minutes five times. This study
aims to expand on the work that was done in 2022 and 2023, when the World Health Organization
- 5 Wellbeing Index (WHO-5) and the Warwick Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale (WEMWBS) were
collected from participants to ascertain the impact of mental hygiene, by way of including a
control group.
Description:
Although mental hygiene is a relatively novel idea, the term can be found in the early 20th
century literature. Tremblay et al. {2021) essentially reintroduced the concept and proposed
its framework in the scientific literature.
Within public health guidelines, there are standard recommendations given to the public in
terms of maintenance of various dimensions of their health. For example, the Canadian Dental
Association recommends 2 minutes of teeth brushing twice daily. The World Health Organization
(WHO) recommends 150 minutes of moderate physical activity per week for the average adult to
support physical health. Showering daily, and frequent hand washing have become embedded in
public awareness. As of yet, there is no such well-defined equivalent vis-à-vis mental health
in terms of a standardized universal recommendation. Tremblay et al. (2021) proposed a mental
hygiene framework that seeks to address this gap and move towards a standardized public
facing mental health recommendation equivalent to those that already exist for other
dimensions of health. The mental hygiene toolkit is free, accessible and provided through a
social equity lens so that anyone from any walk of life can engage in mental wellness without
barriers such as cost or availability of time. Our preliminary program evaluation findings of
the survey data for both years (2022 and 2023) showed a promising signal, which is prompting
us to prepare this study that will be built into the 2024 Mental Hygiene Challenge that will
involve a control group. It is imperative to continue acquiring empirical data on the impact
daily mental hygiene practices has on one's mental wellbeing.
The mental hygiene framework is grounded in 5 main categories of mental training activities.
They include: meditation (mindfulness and other techniques), positive psychology
interventions, self-directed cognitive behavioral therapy exercises (CBT), pro-social prayer
(referring to prayers of thanks and praying for others vs. ritualist/obligatory and
supplication prayers), and nature exposure.
Our objective is to gain a better understanding of the impact the mental hygiene challenge
has on the wellbeing of its participants for the upcoming Mental Hygiene Challenge of March
2024. In order to do that, we aim to conduct pre-post wellbeing surveys using validated
psychometric measures for participants of the challenge. Moreover, we intend to conduct the
same pre-post wellbeing survey approach with a control group who will be given standard
self-care recommendations. The comparison of the two groups we hope, will offer insight on
the impact mental hygiene has on those who participate daily.
Our overall objective is to determine the impact on mental wellbeing as measured by the WHO-5
and WEMWBS that the mental hygiene challenge of March 2024 will have on its participants.
Specifically, we aim to:
- Test the hypothesis that there is a statistically significant change (increase) in the
mental wellbeing scores for those that completed the challenge and participated daily.
- To test the hypothesis that the change (increase) in pre-post wellbeing scores in the
mental hygiene group will be statistically significantly higher compared to any pre-post
change in wellbeing scores of the control group.
- Test the association between participation level and post wellbeing scores.
Participation levels will be measured by asking in the post survey how many days they
participated in mental hygiene (or self-care) as well as indexing the number of
completed daily surveys as an indicator of participation.
