Limitations and future research
depression, mental illness, depressive, anxiety
When interpreting the results, the following limitations must be considered. There were differences between both groups, that affected their comparability: At T1, the control group scored descriptively lower on the subscales of the DASS-21 and significantly higher (Since the interest in participating in our study was tremendously high (nearly 600 people contacted us), future studies should address the urgent need for low-threshold interventions. Due to its simple structure, our PoET has the potential to build a foundation for a large-scale implementation. Future research is needed to test the effects of PoET on mental health in a randomized controlled trial. This would lead to more comparable groups when assessing the impact of the training on various positive psychological variables. As this research showed that PoET could significantly reduce depression and anxiety scores on the DASS-21 in the general population, it would also be interesting to investigate whether implementing the training can also improve depressive or anxiety symptoms in people with a diagnosed mental illness. Another interesting approach would be a comparison between an online and offline form of PoET to assess possible differences in the effectiveness.