Mobile Acceptance and Commitment Therapy in Bipolar Disorder: Microrandomized Trial

Background: Mobile interventions promise to fill in gaps in care with their broad reach and flexible delivery.Objective: Our goal was to investigate delivery of a mobile version of acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) for individuals Methods: Individuals with BP (n=30) participated in a 6-week microrandomized trial. Twice daily, participants logged symptoms in the app and were repeatedly randomized (or not) to receive an ACT intervention. Self-reported behavior and mood were measured as the energy devoted to moving toward valued domains or away from difficult emotions and with depressive d and manic m scores from the digital survey of mood in BP survey (digiBP).Results: Participants completed an average of 66% of in-app assessments. Interventions did not significantly impact the average toward energy or away energy but did significantly increase the average manic score m (P=.008) and depressive score d (P=.02). This was driven by increased fidgeting and irritability and interventions focused on increasing awareness of internal experiences.Conclusions: The findings of the study do not support a larger study on the mobile ACT in BP but have significant implications for future studies seeking mobile therapy for individuals with BP.

Automated summary

This study investigated the effectiveness of a mobile version of acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) for individuals with bipolar disorder (BP). The findings suggest that the mobile ACT had an impact on the participants' mood, but do not support further large-scale studies.