Help Texts Grief Intervention for Bereaved College Students

Grief and loss are common occurrences among students on college campuses but are inadequately addressed and associated with a number of negative outcomes. A mixed methods study of grieving students on a large campus found that 60% of those surveyed within a 3-year period at UCLA reported experiencing the loss of a loved one, but only 8% reported using campus resources to aid them during their grief, and only 38% sought resources off-campus (e.g., therapy, support groups, psychiatry). Numerous barriers to accessing grief support resources have been identified, including not knowing about them or perceiving them to be inadequate. Moreover, over one-third of participants interviewed in the study noted stigma associated with help-seeking. Despite a high prevalence of experiences of grief among students, resource utilization for supporting bereavement remains low.

Help Texts offers text message-based grief support, overcoming the barriers of access and stigma by providing up to a year of private, evidence-based grief support developed by clinical psychologists. Help Texts is an established company (specifically, a Public Benefit Corporation) and is currently in use. It was founded in 2018 and comprises a fully remote, 7-person team with over 100+ additional Expert Contributors providing expertise on different types of loss (e.g., the loss of a sibling, child, parent, partner; loss to cancer, dementia, suicide, COVID-19, etc); and the unique risks associated with being a caregiver, veteran, or member of the LGBTQIA2S+ or Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) communities. Help Texts is delivering support in 57 countries, in all 50 states in the U.S., and in 27 languages.

Help Texts provides twice-weekly, one-way texts offering basic grief education by normalizing and validating the grief experience and then offering tips for coping within various themes around grief. Preliminary evidence suggests that bereaved users of HelpTexts have found it supportive; 95% of all users rated their satisfaction with HelpTexts as a 4 or 5 out of 5 and found the text messages helpful. The proposed study is a randomized control trial that aims to evaluate the effectiveness of Help Texts to grieving students at UCLA in reducing grief severity and symptoms of depression, preventing prolonged grief and major depressive disorder, and in improving quality of life and occupational functioning (e.g., graduation, grades, student enrollment retention).

Inclusion criteria

• Enrolled UCLA student
• At least 18 years old
• Experienced death of a close person in the past 12 months
• Able to read English