Boosting Emotions & Happiness in Outpatients Living With Diabetes

Study Summary

The investigators developed a novel, telephone-based, 12-week positive psychology intervention and will assess its feasibility and short-term impact in adults with type 2 diabetes (T2D) and suboptimal health behavior adherence. Participants will receive a positive psychology (PP) manual, complete exercises (e.g., writing a gratitude letter, performing acts of kindness), and review these activities by phone with a study trainer over the 12-week study period. Specific Aim #1 (Feasibility and acceptability (immediate impact); primary aim): To assess whether PP exercises administered over the phone are feasible and linked with immediate benefit in patients with T2D, as measured by ratings provided pre- and post- each exercise. Hypothesis: The PP exercises will be feasible (i.e., 4 of the 7 PP exercises will be completed by a majority of participants, and participants will have a mean score of at least 7 out of 10 on ratings of ease of completion for the exercises. The PP exercises will also have adequate immediate impact (i.e., mean ratings of 7/10 of exercise utility post-exercise and ratings of optimism post-exercise that are significantly higher than pre-exercise). Specific Aim #2 (Changes in clinical outcome measures): To determine whether the PP intervention is linked to improvements in psychological well-being, during and after the intervention period (6 \& 12 weeks), via measures of optimism, gratitude, depression, and anxiety. To examine whether the brief PP intervention is associated with improvements in self-reported outcomes related to health (diabetes self-care, diabetes distress, health related quality of life), during and after the intervention. Hypothesis: Participants will have higher mean scores on all psychological outcome measures at 6 and 12 weeks compared to baseline. Participants will also have higher mean scores on all health-related outcome measures at 6 and 12 weeks compared to baseline.

Primary Outcome

Rate of intervention feasibility will be measured by the number of exercises completed by each participant. After the exercise, participants will rate the ease of the exercise on a 0-10 Likert scale. Feasibility will be defined as: 4 of the 7 PP exercises will be completed by a majority of patients and subjects will have a mean score of at least 3.5 out of 5 on ratings of ease of completion for the exercises.

Interventions

• BEHAVIORAL Positive Psychology