Authors: Kacey Rowe, Rachel Arocho, Allison Ensign
Mentors: Rachel Arocho, Allison Ensign
Insitution: Utah Valley University
Mental health amongst IBD patients is often overlooked and forgotten when they are dealing with their personal physical symptoms. There is little research on the benefits of social support for IBD patients. In online forums, it appears some IBD patients report feeling depressed and having negative thoughts about living life on a day-to-day basis. Indeed, prior research has found associations between IBD and mental health; for example, one study found that 17.3% of IBD patients had lifetime suicidal ideation, which is much higher than the general population at a 4.0% rate (Xiong et al., 2022). Another study did physical and mental exams and found on average, people with higher depression symptoms were six times more likely to have their disease be more active (Marrie et al., 2021, para. 16). Due to the high rate of depression, it would be beneficial to design a website to track symptoms and create online forums giving people the opportunity to connect with peers who have IBD.
IBD can drastically affect a person’s life, even in a mild case. According to the CDC, IBD is estimated to affect 3 million US adults, a little over 1% of all Americans (Xu et al, 2018). Few people in the 1% category who struggle with IBD have connected online with others who are experiencing the same autoimmune disease.
Although prior research has identified the association between physical IBD symptoms and mental health, little has been proposed to help these patients. Our goal is to create a form of social support for people who have been diagnosed with IBD. For 30 days, we will take 20 participants and have them record their symptoms and thoughts through quantitative and qualitative data. To do this, the participants will be asked to use a website which we have created from scratch. They will be using the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9) and the Short Inflammatory Bowel Disease Questionnaire (SIBDQ). The PHQ-9 will be used to check in on mental health, while the SIBDQ will focus on the physical symptoms of IBD. Each week, they will participate in forums on the website, which will allow them to connect online and anonymously with others who share their experiences. At the start of the month, daily throughout the study, and at the end of the month, participants will report on their health symptoms through a combination of the measures named above and short tracker questions.
(Note: Project is still under IRB approval, we aim to start participants by the end of the year.)