A Crowdsourced Megastudy of 12 Digital Single-Session Interventions for Depression in American Adults
Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Study designs: Randomized Controlled Trial, Clinical Trial
Abstract: Digital, self-guided, single-session interventions (SSIs) offer a structured psychological intervention within one interaction. We crowdsourced 66 diverse 10-minute SSIs for depression and selected 11 for testing in a pre-registered experiment (ClinicalTrials.gov ID: NCT06856668). American adults (N = 7,505) experiencing elevated depressive symptoms were recruited online and randomly assigned to one of the 11 crowdsourced SSIs, a previously-validated active comparison SSI, or a control without intervention content. Nearly all SSIs boosted agency and hope for improvement immediately after completion (ds ≤ 0.37). However, only two SSIs significantly reduced depression at four-week follow-up (ds = 0.14 and 0.15). Unexpectedly, some SSIs may have decreased readiness to change at four weeks (ds ≤ 0.14). The most successful SSIs provided memorable, engaging, and actionable guidance on a skill that directly addressed users’ struggles. Future work should aim to leverage SSIs’ short-term gains to promote sustained behavior change or service engagement.
Authors: Benjamin Kaveladze, Jan G. Voelkel, Michael Stagnaro, Mingjing Huang, Amanda Smock, Erin Sullivan, Yao Xu, Madison P McCall, Juan Pablo Zapata, Syed Ishtiaque Ahmed, Ananya Bhattacharjee, Iva Georgieva, Rosa Hernandez-Ramos, Kenneth S Huber, Julia K Jennings, Arianna C Kirk, Robert M Knowles, Rachel Kornfield, Monika Neff Lind, Michelle Liu, Michael Liut, Alex Mariakakis, Ali M Mattu, Adam P McGuire, Jonah Meyerhoff, Alissa Mrazek, Michael Mrazek, David C Mohr, Robert Morris, Christopher J Mosunic, Hana Nip, Allen Olson-Urtecho, Jessa R Podell, Dustyn Ransom, Shireen L. Rizvi, Matthew W. Southward, Sarah Elizabeth Stoeckl, Madison Taylor, Amy Texter, Calvin Tower, Angelique N Trotter, Joseph Jay Williams, Katherine Wislocki, Elijah J Woodson, John Protzko, Lorenzo Lorenzo-Luaces, Stephen M. Schueller, Matthew Nock, Jessica L. Schleider
Language: English
Subfield: Applied Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
OpenAlex ID: W7125590037
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