A Florida State University researcher has received more than $2 million in funding to help develop a cellphone application that will enable people to access digital interventions for anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorders.
Brad Schmidt, FSU distinguished research professor and director of FSU’s Anxiety and Behavioral Health Clinic, will use the National Institute of Mental Health grant to partner with Oui Therapeutics to create an app and chatbot that deliver therapeutic treatment to participants with anxiety sensitivity.
“In my research career, I have become more interested in addressing treatment dissemination,” said Schmidt, who also serves as psychology chair. “There’s a common issue of having strong treatments, especially for various anxiety conditions, but due to the long-term administration time and highly trained clinicians necessary to administer treatment, it can be very expensive and prohibitively inaccessible. The research this grant supports is a new and different pathway that will prove useful in treating these conditions.”
Anxiety disorders are among the most common mental health concerns in the U.S., according to the National Alliance for Mental Illness, and they affect more than 40 million adults and about 7% of children ages 3-17 annually. The National Center for PTSD notes about 5% of American adults experience PTSD each year. Using efficient mobile technology opens a new avenue in addressing treatment access for these individuals.
Schmidt’s self-guided treatment doesn’t require patients to be re-exposed to traumatic events and is significantly less invasive than common types of cognitive behavioral treatments, such as exposure therapy, that involve confronting issues.
Anxiety is related to several other clinical diagnoses, such as PTSD, so consistent use of the rules-based chatbot therapy treatment, which has already shown success in treatment results, can reduce symptoms stemming from various issues.
Through this grant, Oui Therapeutics — a company led by Yale University psychiatrists that develops digital therapeutic solutions to mental health problems — will also seek FDA approval for the treatment to ensure regulatory measures are in place to prevent negative impacts on at-risk individuals and to make it accessible to patients who need it.
“Having these great colleagues and collaborators allows us all to achieve state-of-the-art innovative projects like this particular grant. We’re working to give people their lives back.”
– Brad Schmidt, director of FSU’s Anxiety and Behavioral Health Clinic
“The company’s ability to develop chatbot technology and smartphone applications allows our research team to employ treatments in a new way to reach new patients,” Schmidt said. “Without this partnership, it would be much harder to optimize our treatments for people.”
Trials will measure the reduction of PTSD symptoms in participants using a PTSD checklist based on guidelines from the American Psychological Association and will monitor symptom changes during and after treatments. Schmidt and his team will convert their treatments measuring anxiety sensitivity into technical language, work with Oui Therapeutics to determine effective dosages, develop the chatbot targeting anxiety sensitivity and create a streamlined delivery system through application development.
“Oui Therapeutics has experience with the technical aspects of application development, allowing us to provide a product that will be easy for people to find and accessible for people of different income levels,” Schmidt said. “Patients can access treatment and get a lot out of it.”
FSU Psychology Professor Jesse Cougle, who leads the Cougle Lab in its research into anxiety, problematic anger and obsessive-compulsive disorders, will lead the grant in its trials measuring anxiety sensitivity and the application’s impact.
“It’s great to partner with companies such as Oui Therapeutics that have technical expertise in product development and can adapt their skills and our research for widespread use, and I’m happy to be involved in running the trials on such a high-stakes subject,” Cougle said. “Treatment underutilization is a huge problem and is more complex than people realize. These treatments have the potential to reach a lot of people who would benefit as they may not have had access to anything like it before.”
This grant is funded by the National Institute of Mental Health’s Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer programs through Yale University and Oui Therapeutics.
“FSU’s Department of Psychology is one of the best clinical research departments in the country,” Schmidt said. “Having these great colleagues and collaborators allows us all to achieve state-of-the-art innovative projects like this particular grant. We’re working to give people their lives back.”
Improving how health care services get to the patients who need it is a focus of FSU Health, a bold initiative of Florida State University to build healthy communities in North Florida and beyond.
To learn more about research conducted in FSU’s Department of Psychology, visit psychology.fsu.edu. For more information on FSU’s Anxiety and Behavioral Health Clinic, visit the clinic online.