An Educational Tool on Gut Health: Learning, Unlearning, and Exploring the Microbiome

Summary

Background:
Mood disorders like major depressive disorder and bipolar disorder make up a large part of the population. People with these disorders can experience a hard time with their mental health. They can also struggle with their physical health, and lifestyle. For many patients, current treatments rely on psychotherapy and pharmacotherapy. These treatments may be inaccessible or produce negative side effects. Currently, there is an increase in research which focuses on the microbiome-gut-brain axis. This is to develop different forms of treatment for mood disorders. Current readings shows that the gut plays an important role for the human body systems. Some of these systems are responsible for stress, anxiety, and depression. The treatments that this study will focus on promote healthy gut microbiota growth. This includes probiotics, prebiotics, dietary changes, and fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT). Patients have little awareness of, knowledge of, and misinformed attitudes towards MBT. This is due to some factors such as stigma. Other factors are satisfaction with current treatments, and lack of success of MBT. Many participants expressed their interest in learning more about the MBT. This was based on a previous study exploring patient perception of microbiome-based therapies.

What is the study?
This study offers a platform for those who are eager to learn more about the gut microbiome to educate themselves. This will be done through a series of short educational videos. The videos would be about 1-2 minutes long.

What will the participant have to do?
The participant’s knowledge and understanding will be tested with an assessment. The assessment will be taken before and after watching the videos. This is to measure the participant's knowledge before and after watching the videos.