Evaluation of a spirituality informed e-mental health tool as an intervention for major depressive disorder in adolescents and young adults - a randomized controlled pilot trial.

Background: Depression in adolescents and young adults is a major mental health condition that requires attention. Research suggests that approaches that include spiritual concepts and are delivered through an online platform are a potentially beneficial approach to treating/managing depression in this population. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of an 8-week online spirituality informed e-mental health intervention (the LEAP Project) on depression severity, and secondary outcomes of spiritual well-being and self-concept, in adolescents and young adults with major depressive disorder of mild to moderate severity.

Reduced health resource use after acupuncture for low-back pain.

Objectives: Acupuncture is commonly used to treat low-back pain (LBP) and clinical trials have demonstrated its efficacy. However, less is known about how the utilization of acupuncture impacts public health service utilization in the real world. This study investigates the association between acupuncture utilization for LBP and health care utilization by assessing whether patients who undergo acupuncture subsequently use fewer health care resources and whether those patients differ in their health care use from the general population with LBP.

A spirituality teaching program for depression: a randomized controlled trial.

Objective: This randomized controlled trial assessed the efficacy of a Spirituality Teaching Program to treat unipolar major depression.

Method: A randomized controlled, assessor blinded trial design was used. A total of 84 individuals aged 18 years or older with unipolar major depression of mild to moderate severity were recruited in Calgary, Canada and randomized to two study arms: 1) Spirituality Teaching Program Group (8 week, home-based Spirituality Teaching Program); and 2) Waitlist Control Group (no intervention followed by Spirituality Teaching Program starting at week 9).