COMPASS Programme for anxiety and low mood

What the researchers looked at

Crohn's and Colitis are both long-term conditions. Having any long-term condition makes it more likely that you will experience anxiety or depression. About 1 in every 3 people living with Crohn’s or Colitis experience anxiety and about 1 in 4 experience depression. This is more common at certain times, such as after receiving a diagnosis or during a flare-up. However emotional support, such as talking therapies, can be difficult to access when it is most needed.

COMPASS is an online programme that has been developed to help people with long-term conditions cope with anxiety and depression. COMPASS is based on a treatment called cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT). Using CBT, COMPASS focusses on understanding how a long-term condition contributes to depression or anxiety and ways of coping with symptoms or uncertainty.

This research created a version of the programme tailored specifically to Inflammatory Bowel Diseases (IBD) like Crohn’s and Colitis. Researchers worked together with people living with IBD to get feedback on and modify the current COMPASS programme. These changes helped the programme addresses particular challenges faced by people living with Crohn’s or Colitis.

Researchers explored the practicality of using online questionnaires to screen people’s levels of anxiety and depression before clinic appointments. They then looked at whether COMPASS-IBD helped with anxiety and depression.

What the researchers found

Sixty-five patients took part in the COMPASS-IBD treatment. Researchers found that after the COMPASS-IBD treatment, patients reported:

• A significant reduction in psychological distress
• An improvement in IBD-related quality of life
• An improvement in confidence at managing their IBD symptoms

This suggests that COMPASS-IBD is a useful treatment for people living with Crohn’s or Colitis who experience anxiety or depression.

Researchers found from interviews that both patients and healthcare professionals thought it was important to ask about mental health to help identify people who need support early.

What the researchers think this could mean for people with Crohn's or Colitis

Researchers think that COMPASS-IBD can help to improve anxiety and depression in people living with IBD. The researchers hope to use these findings to further develop COMPASS-IBD and to use it in wider clinical settings to help support mental health in people living with Crohn’s and Colitis.

The researchers plan to do future work to look at how a treatment with COMPASS-IBD can be made widely available to support a wide range of people living with IBD.

Who lead this research: Dr Federica Picariello and Professor Rona Moss-Morris, King's College London
Our funding: £98,571
Duration: 18 months
Official title of application: Feasibility study to assess the implementation of routine mental health screening and guided web-based cognitive behavioural therapy tailored for treating anxiety and depression in Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) in a large NHS gastroenterology service