App shown to support mental health in Parkinson’s

Since 2021, we’ve been funding Dr Angeliki Bogosian at the City, University of London. Her work focuses on how individuals and families adjust when affected by a long-term health condition and looks at mindfulness interventions for people with long-term conditions, such as Parkinson’s.

Mental health and Parkinson’s

Mental health problems, such as depression and anxiety, are common in Parkinson’s. Nearly half of people diagnosed with Parkinson’s will experience symptoms like this at some point during their Parkinson’s journey.

Despite this, there are few treatments that are specifically tailored to help people with Parkinson’s. 

Read more and find support for mental health problems in Parkinson’s.

The PACT app

Dr Bogosian successfully applied for our non-drug approaches grant funding in 2021, to support an idea she had for a mental health therapy programme which had the potential to help people with Parkinson’s manage stress, navigate difficult emotions, and improve quality of life. 

She and her research team developed a therapy programme called PACT. PACT stands for Parkinson’s Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, which is a form of mental health support which uses mindfulness and behaviour change to try and improve an individual’s mental wellbeing.

She worked with 14 people with Parkinson’s to co-design and test the PACT programme as a smartphone and web application. PACT offers short, 5 to 10 minute lessons which are self-guided. The lessons are designed for easy learning, covering topics like motivation, changing behaviors, mindfulness, and goal setting. Each lesson includes brief audio or video explanations of a skill, followed by tasks to practice and reflect on what was learned.

Shah was part of the group that helped design the PACT app. He said: "First I commented on the overall view and feel of [the PACT app]. Then  I used it everyday for a month and then I had a chat with the people designing the app. In the interview they asked me what I thought, how it could be improved, and what were the good points. So I could help develop the app, in that respect. As I was interested in psychology myself, I enjoyed it very much.

"It really made me think about well-being every day, because every day it is sending you emails which reinforces your desire to go and watch the videos. And then during the day you keep remembering the things you heard. [I was] definitely calmer and less anxious."

What did the research show?

After working with people like Shah to design the app programme, with our support Dr Bogosian recruited 57 people with Parkinson’s to test how effective the app was in a research study.

38 of these people were given access to the app for 4 weeks, while the other 19 formed a control group. At the end of the study, everyone was given access to the PACT app and tools.

Dr Bogosian said: "After using the app for 4 weeks, people with Parkinson’s showed less symptoms of depression. People found it really useful in terms of identifying a sense of meaning and developing a more positive mindset. They also liked the flexibility and ease of using the app."

The full results of the small study are available on the Aging and Mental Health website.

Dr Becky Jones, Research Communications Manager at Parkinson’s UK, said: "It’s great to see positive early results for this Parkinson’s UK funded project. This is a great example of how the non-drug approaches grant scheme is providing funding for projects that have the potential to improve everyday living with Parkinson’s, as soon as possible.

“PACT is also a great demonstration of how we can help researchers make their studies more impactful, by uniting researchers with the Parkinson’s community to develop and test ideas, to finding participants for research studies, to sharing their results so that the whole community can benefit.

“It’s exciting to see the potential of the PACT app. We look forward to results from larger studies that will help to further understand this new approach to mental health support.”