Episodic Future Thinking for Positive Events: Enhancing Anticipated Pleasure in Depression

• Register: ANZCTR
• Last refreshed on: 20 August 2018
• Main ID: ACTRN12618000257268
• Date of registration: 16/02/2018
• Prospective Registration: Yes
• Primary sponsor: Deakin University
• Public title: Episodic Future Thinking for Positive Events: Enhancing Anticipated Pleasure in Depression
• Scientific title: Episodic Future Thinking for Positive Events: Enhancing Anticipated Pleasure in Depression
• Date of first enrolment: 18/07/2018
• Target sample size: 10
• Recruitment status: Not yet recruiting
• URL: http://www.anzctr.org.au/ACTRN12618000257268.aspx
• Study type: Interventional
• Study design: Non-randomised trial Single group
• Phase: Not Applicable

Health Condition(s) or Problem(s) studied

Depression

Intervention(s)

Participants will be recruited from inpatient and outpatient settings at the adult mental health service of the National Institute for Mental Health and Neurosciences, Bengaluru, India.
The intervention will consist of a series of brief questions asking participants to provide some detail about the upcoming positive events they anticipate might happen (e.g., what will happen, who will be there, how will you feel, have you enjoyed this before). The intervention is designed to stimulate episodic future thinking about the upcoming event in order to increase anticipated pleasure. This will be implemented as part of monitoring of activity over a 14 day period for depressed individuals recruited from an adult mental health service.

After providing informed consent participants will be randomised to a Phase B start-point, which will be after a minimum of 30 Phase A observations (6 days). Phase B will commence, at the latest, after 55 observations (11 days), and therefore last a minimum of 15 observations (3 days). The actual start-point, and therefore the length of the respective phases, will be randomly determined. Participants will be asked to engage in monitoring of their activity over the 14 days, and over this period, dependent on what start-point they were randomized to, they will switch from Phase A to Phase B.

Participants will receive email links to online surveys 5 times per day (8:30am, 11:30am, 2pm, 4:30pm, and 7pm). Each survey will ask them to indicate what activity they are most looking forward to in the next 2 hours. They will choose from a list of options for each activity (e.g., work/school/study, media/tv/internet, and conversation/socialising, specified other). Participants will then complete a brief series of questions relating to the upcoming positive activity, including how vivid their mental image was, how easy it was to think of the activity, how pleasurable they think it will be, their intention to engage in it, and their current affect. At each prompt they will be also be asked whether or not they engaged in the previously nominated activity, and how enjoyable it was. The surveys are expected to take 3-5 minutes to complete, and the future thinking task approximately 2-4 minutes.

-In Phase A, participants will complete the surveys
-In Phase B, participants will complete these surveys, and also engage in a future thinking task after they nominate the upcoming positive activity. This task will involve mentally simulating the positive activity through a series of online written prompts as part of the survey, and including questions such as 'who will be there', 'what will happen', 'why might you enjoy it', 'what emotion might you feel' etc.

All participants will start in Phase A and then switch to Phase B at some point.

If participants fail to complete several surveys in a row they will be contacted with a phone call to assess for any complicating factors in adherence.

At the cessation of Phase B, the participants will receive evidence-based treatment for depression as per NIMHANS usual care protocols.