The Brighten Your Mood Program: A randomized controlled trial of internet based treatment of depression for Chinese Australians

INTERVENTION: Participants will be randomly assigned to one of two groups: 1) an immediate treatment group, or; 2) a delayed treatment group also known as a waitlist control group (beginnning the program 9 weeks after the immediate treatment group begin). All participants will meet Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 4th Edition (DSM‐IV) criteria for depression. All participants will complete 6 lessons of Internet based treatment about management of symptoms of depression. One lesson will be completed every 7 to 10 days. Each lesson will take about 15 minutes to complete. Participants will also have access to summaries of each lesson, and will read anonymous stories about other people with depression, taking a further 20 minutes per summary. All participants will also receive automatic email and weekly reminder phone calls by a research assistant. The duration of the reminder emails/phone calls is expected to be 5‐10 minutes per week. The duration of the program is 8weeks, but participants in the immediate treatment group will be contacted 3 months post program and asked to complete follow‐up questionnaires. Study questionnaires will be administered at application, pre‐education, post‐education, and at 3‐months post‐education. These will take about 20‐30 minutes to complete. The treatment materials are based on the Sadness Programs, which apply cognitive behavioural techniques such as psychoeducation about the symptoms and treatment of depression, behavioural activation, cognitive restructuring, graded exposure, behavioural experiments, and relapse prevention. CONDITION: Major Depressive Disorder PRIMARY OUTCOME: Depression is measured by the Chinese Beck Depression Inventory (Chinese‐BDI) Depression is measured by the Chinese Patient Health Questionnaire 9‐item (Chinese‐PHQ‐9) SECONDARY OUTCOME: Disability is measured by the Chinese version of the Sheehan Disability Scale (Chinese‐SDS) General levels of depression, anxiety and stress is measured by the Chinese 21‐item Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (Chinese‐DASS‐21) Psychological distress is measured by the Chinese Kessler 10‐item scale (Chinese‐K‐10) INCLUSION CRITERIA: ‐ Meet DSM‐IV criteria for major depressive disorder ‐ Can speak fluent Cantonese or Mandarin ‐ Internet access + printer access ‐ Australian resident ‐ Be of Chinese origin