Digital therapy may outperform referrals to campus mental health clinics among college students, according to new research

College students with anxiety, depression and eating disorders benefit from therapy offered via a digital app, according to new research.

"Overall, these findings support the prevention and treatment benefits of digital therapy as part of the wider set of services available to students," said Dr. Daniel Eisenberg, a co-author of the study and professor in the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health's Department of Health Policy and Management. "The intervention reduced symptoms and substantially increased access to care, showing a markedly higher uptake than a passive referral to usual services. This underscores the viability of digital services as a scalable, population-based approach to improving mental health."

The peer-reviewed research - "Population-based RCT of a digital cognitive-behavioral guided self-help intervention for anxiety, depression, and eating disorders in college students" - was published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour. RCT in this usage refers to a randomized controlled trial.

"The study is notable because it is one of the largest ever randomized trials to evaluate the impact of offering digital mental health services to college student populations," said Eisenberg, who also serves as a principal investigator of the annual national "Healthy Minds Study" and as an advisor for UCLA's own "Hope Connects Us" student-focused mental health initiative. "We used a public health approach that includes both treatment and prevention, and we found significant benefits of the intervention."

Read the full story on the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health website.