Hand Twelve Jing-Well Points Exercise on Subthreshold Depression College Students: Study Protocol for a Randomized Controlled Trial

Introduction: Depression seriously affects the health of people all over the world. At the early stage of depression, subthreshold depression is very important for early prevention and treatment of depression. The hand twelve Jing -well points exercise is traditional Chinese therapy for acupoint stimulation. We designed a parallel randomized clinical trial to observe the intervention effect of hand twelve Jing -well points exercise on subthreshold depression in college students. Methods: : This is a randomized, parallel controlled clinical trial. Sixty-two eligible participants will be randomly assigned to the intervention group or the waiting-list control group according to the ratio of 1: 1. The intervention group will be received hand twelve Jing -well points exercise for 16 weeks. The waiting-list control group will not receive the intervention and participants will be taught the hand twelve Jing -well points exercise after the experiment. The main outcomes are Self-rating Depression Scale and Beck Depression Inventory-II, and the secondary outcomes are Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index, reward processing cognitive behavioral data and functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy data, which will be detected at baseline, 4 weeks and 16 weeks after the intervention. Discussion: A randomized controlled trial will be conducted to assess the effectiveness of hand twelve Jing -well points exercise on patients with subthreshold depression so as to provide evidence for further promoting subthreshold depression management. Trial registration: Chinese Clinical Trial Registry, Registration number :ChiCTR2100052960;Registered on November 6th, 2021.