2 - (SYM 66) Feasibility and Acceptability of Implementing a Mentor-guided, App-based Cognitive-bias Modification for Interpretation (CBM-I) Intervention for Anxious Youth

Objective: Digital mental health interventions (DMHIs), such as cognitive bias modification for interpretations (CBM-I), offer promise for increasing access to anxiety treatment among underserved adolescents but results are mixed. Engaging trusted non-parent adult mentors to provide supportive accountability to anxious adolescents using DMHIs may improve intervention scalability and increase youth engagement. The present study tested the feasibility and acceptability of implementing MindTrails Teen (an app-based, youth-adapted version of the online MindTrails CBM-I intervention) through formal and informal mentor/mentee dyads.

Methods: 7 adult mentors (M_age = 44 years; 85.71% female; 100% White; 100% non-Hispanic) and 7 anxious adolescent mentees (M_age = 14.8 years; 50% male; 33.33% another gender identity; 16.67% prefer not to answer; 66.67% White, 66.67% non-Hispanic) primarily residing in rural America provided feedback in qualitative interviews.

Results: Mentors perceived the app as helpful to their mentees and found that it either improved or did not affect their relationship, but also identified implementation challenges, such as mental health literacy of the community and individual personality factors of youth. Mentees identified monotony of content, length of exercises, in-app timers, and individual characteristics as barriers to engagement, and identified relatable scenarios, writing out their thoughts, shorter exercises, and notifications as facilitators to engagement. Both mentors and mentees suggested that mentor involvement was beneficial to mentee engagement and offered ideas for improvement of the app and implementation workflow.

Discussion: Users had an overall favorable opinion of MindTrails Teen, but improvements are needed to increase mentee engagement and account for contextual factors, such as community mental health literacy and heterogeneous youth home environments.