Wk 1 interventions asynch

• Intervention- action

  Any action intended to interfere with and stop or modify a process, as in treatment undertaken to halt, manage, or alter the course of the pathological process of a disease or disorder
• Intervention

  Action on the part of a psychotherapist to deal with the issues and problems of a client. The selection of the intervention is guided by the nature of the problem, the orientation of the therapist, the setting, and the willingness and ability of the client to proceed with the treatment
• Intervention(RD)

  In research design, an experimental manipulation
• Psychological intervention- aim, theory, effectiveness

  • Aim to produce change - attempting to solve a problem
  • Theory can be used to help decide what factors are most important to focus on to help solve the problem
  • Need to be evaluated to see whether they produce the expected change - did they work?
• RCT (randomised controlled trial)

  Compare the intervention against something else (no intervention, usual care, another active intervention) to see whether the intervention is better or worse in terms of patient outcomes
• RCTs not always possible - quasi-experimental, before and after studies also useful designs
• Public health behaviour change intervention

  • Change4Life campaign
• Change4Life

  Public Health England campaign launched in 2009 to reduce childhood obesity through social marketing
• 61% of adults and 28% of children were obese, obesity-related health problems cost the NHS >£5billion every year
• Change4Life interventionaim for people

  Encourage people to be more active, and eat and drink more healthily (education and advice; including of calorie information on menus; food packaging labelling systems)
• Difficult to evaluate public health campaigns - hard to find a control group not exposed to the intervention once it has been rolled out
• Evaluation of Change4Life

  • Croker et al (2012) - randomised controlled trial found increased awareness, but little change in attitudes or behaviour
  • Wrieden & Levy (2016) - quasi-experimental study found short-term behaviour change ("smart swaps") but may not be sustainable long-term
• Quasi-experimental studyuse in inter

  Not a randomised controlled trial - could still compare 2 groups
• Quasi-experimental study of Change4Life

  • Intervention group: Families in England who had signed up to Smart Swaps
  • Comparison group: Families in Wales - no sign-up facility available
• A higher percentage of families in the intervention group had made healthy swaps compared to the comparison group, but can this be maintained over time?
• Individual-level behaviour change intervention

  • Behavioural Activation
• Behavioural Activation

  A form of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) which focuses more directly on the behavioural aspects of a condition, used in the NHS to treat depression
• Clinical depression is a recurrent, debilitating condition with a global prevalence of 16%, annual costs of depression and anxiety are around £17bn in the UK
• Behavioural Activationas an intervention

  A relatively simple intervention - easy for patients to understand and operationalise
• How did they do the Evaluation of Behavioural Activation

  • Randomised controlled trial of BA vs CBT - COBRA trial
• The COBRA trial found no difference in depression scores at 12 month follow-up between the BA and CBT groups - both were equally effective
• The COBRA trial authors wanted to show that BA could be delivered by healthcare professionals and was equally as effective as CBT - so this was a good result