Healy, K. L., Sanders, M. R.

Randomized Controlled Trial of a Family Intervention for Children Bullied by Peers

This study examined the effects of a family intervention on victimization and emotional distress of children bullied by peers. The intervention, Resilience Triple P, combined facilitative parenting and teaching children social and emotional skills relevant to developing strong peer relationships and addressing problems with peers. Facilitative parenting is parenting that supports the development of children's peer relationship skills. A randomized controlled trial was conducted with 111 families who reported chronic bullying of children aged 6 to 12. years. Families were randomly allocated to either an immediate start to Resilience Triple P (RTP) or an assessment control (AC) condition. Assessments involving children, parents, teachers, and observational measures were conducted at 0 (pre), 3 (post) and 9. months follow-up. RTP families had significantly greater improvements than AC families on measures of victimization, child distress, child peer and family relationships, including teacher reports of overt victimization (d = 0.56), child internalizing feelings (d = 0.59), depressive symptoms (d = 0.56), child overt aggression towards peers (d = 0.51), acceptance by same sex and opposite sex peers (d = 0.46/ 0.60), and child liking school (d = 0.65). Families in both conditions showed significant improvements on most variables over time including child reports of bullying in the last week reducing to a near zero and indistinguishable from the normative sample. The intervention combining facilitative parenting and social and emotional skills training for children produced better results than the comparison assessment control condition. This study demonstrated that family interventions can reduce victimization and distress and strengthen school efforts to address bullying.

Behavior Therapy, 45(6) : 760-777

Hektner, J. M., August, G. J., Bloomquist, M. L., Lee, S., Klimes-Dougan, B.

A 10-year randomized controlled trial of the Early Risers conduct problems preventive intervention: Effects on externalizing and internalizing in late high school

Objective: The purpose of this study was to examine the long-term effects of the Early Risers a (euro)oeSkills for Successa Conduct Problems Prevention Program (ER; August, Bloomquist, Realmuto, & Hektner, 2007), a multifaceted program targeting social, emotional, behavioral, and academic risk and protective factors to promote adaptive psychological development. Method: Based on the random assignment of their school, 245 kindergartners (mean age = 6.6 years, SD = 0.57; 68.6% male) with elevated teacher-rated aggressive behavior either participated in ER for 3 intensive years plus 2 booster years or served as controls. Participants were assessed annually during the intervention with teacher and parent reports and at 2 follow-up points. In the current study, 129 of the original participants were reassessed with diagnostic interviews in late high school (mean age = 16.3, SD = 0.52), and multiple imputation was used to deal appropriately with missing data. Results: Program participants had significantly fewer symptoms of conduct disorder, oppositional defiant disorder, and major depressive disorder than did controls. The programas effect on increasing social skills and parent discipline effectiveness by Grade 3 mediated these effects. Conclusions: The results of this study provide further evidence of the long-term positive effects of multicomponent, elementary-age, targeted conduct problems prevention programs. Training children in social skills and parents in effective discipline are possible mechanisms to divert maladaptive developmental cascades. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved). (copyright) 2014 American Psychological Association.

Journal of Consulting & Clinical Psychology, 82(2) : 355-360

Guo, Xiamei., Slesnick, Natasha., Feng, Xin.

Reductions in depressive symptoms among substance-abusing runaway adolescents and their primary caretakers: a randomized clinical trial

This study reports secondary outcome findings on depressive symptoms from a randomized clinical trial testing three interventions for substance-abusing runaway adolescents. In particular, the effect of a family systems therapy, Ecologically Based Family Therapy (EBFT), and two individual therapies, the Community Reinforcement Approach (CRA) and Motivational Enhancement Therapy (MET), on adolescent and primary caretaker (PC) depressive symptoms were compared. Findings showed that youth's depressive symptoms were significantly reduced in each treatment to 2 years postbaseline. However, the trajectory of change differed across treatments, with adolescents receiving MET showing a more rapid reduction in depressive symptoms but a quicker increase in symptoms compared with adolescents receiving EBFT. PCs receiving EBFT showed a statistically significant decline in depressive symptoms, but this was not observed for the CRA and MET conditions. These findings can be interpreted to favor EBFT, although future research is needed to test training and implementation strategies for family systems therapies in community-based runaway shelters.;

Journal of Family Psychology, 28(1) : 98- 105

Jacobs, R. H., Becker, S. J., Curry, J. F., Silva, S. G., Ginsburg, G. S., Henry, D. B., Reinecke, M. A.

Increasing positive outlook partially mediates the effect of empirically supported treatments on depression symptoms among adolescents

Among adolescents there is evidence that cognitive change partially mediates the effect of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) on depression outcome. However, prior studies have been limited by small samples, narrow measures of cognition, and failure to compare cognitive change following CBT to cognitive change following antidepressant medication. This study examined whether change in four cognitive constructs (cognitive distortions, cognitive avoidance, positive outlook, and solution-focused thinking) mediated change in depression severity in a sample of 291 adolescents who participated in the Treatment for Adolescents with Depression Study (TADS). TADS assessed the effects of CBT, fluoxetine, and their combination on depression severity. All three treatments were associated with change in the cognitive constructs and combination treatment produced the greatest change. Furthermore, change in the cognitive constructs partially mediated change in depression severity within all three treatments. Results implicated positive outlook as the construct most associated with change in depression severity over 36 weeks. (copyright) 2014 Springer Publishing Company.

Journal of Cognitive Psychotherapy, 28(1) : 3-19

Huang, J., Sherraden, M., Purnell, J. Q.

Impacts of Child Development Accounts on maternal depressive symptoms: Evidence from a randomized statewide policy experiment

This study examines the impact of Child Development Accounts (CDAs)-asset-building accounts created for children at birth-on the depressive symptoms of mothers in a statewide randomized experiment conducted in the United States. The experiment identified the primary caregivers of children born in Oklahoma during 2007, and 2704 of the caregivers completed a baseline interview before random assignment to the treatment (n=1358) or the control group (n=1346). To treatment participants, the experiment offered CDAs built on the existing Oklahoma 529 College Savings Plan. The baseline and follow-up surveys measured the participants' depressive symptoms with a shortened version of the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D). In models that control for baseline CES-D scores, the mean follow-up score of treatment mothers is .17 lower than that of control mothers (p<.05). Findings suggest that CDAs have a greater impact among subsamples that reported lower income or lower education. Although designed as an economic intervention for children, CDAs may improve parents' psychological well-being. Findings also suggest that CDAs' impacts on maternal depressive symptoms may be partially mediated through children's social-emotional development. (copyright) 2014 Elsevier Ltd.

Social Science & Medicine, 112 : 30- 38

Jensen, T. K., Holt, T., Ormhaug, S. M., Egeland, K., Granly, L., Hoaas, L. C., Hukkelberg, S. S., Indregard, T., Stormyren, S. D., Wentzel-Larsen, T.

A Randomized Effectiveness Study Comparing Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy With Therapy as Usual for Youth

The efficacy of trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy (TF-CBT) has been shown in several randomized controlled trials. However, few trials have been conducted in community clinics, few have used therapy as usual (TAU) as a comparison group, and none have been conducted outside of the United States. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of TF-CBT in regular community settings compared with TAU. One hundred fifty- six traumatized youth (M age = 15.1 years, range = 10-18; 79.5% girls) were randomly assigned to TF-CBT or TAU. Intent-to-treat analysis using mixed effects models showed that youth receiving TF-CBT reported significantly lower levels of posttraumatic stress symptoms (est. = 5.78, d = 0.51), 95% CI [2.32, 9.23]; depression (est. = 7.00, d = 0.54), 95% CI [2.04, 11.96]; and general mental health symptoms (est. = 2.54, d = 0.45), 95% CI [0.50, 4.58], compared with youth in the TAU group. Youth assigned to TF-CBT showed significantly greater improvements in functional impairment (est. = - 1.05, d = -0.55), 95% CI [-1.67, -0.42]. Although the same trend was found for anxiety reduction, this difference was not statistically significant (est. = 4.34, d = 0.30), 95% CI [-1.50, 10.19]. Significantly fewer youths in the TF-CBT condition were diagnosed with posttraumatic stress disorder compared to youths in the TAU condition, (chi)2(1, N = 116) = 4.61, p =.031, Phi =.20). Findings indicate that TF-CBT is effective in treating traumatized youth in community mental health clinics and that the program may also be successfully implemented in countries outside the United States. (copyright) 2014 Copyright Tine K. Jensen, Tonje Holt, Silje M. Ormhaug, Karina Egeland, Lene Granly, Live C. Hoaas, Silje S. Hukkelberg, Tore Indregard, Shirley D. Stormyren, and Tore Wentzel-Larsen.

Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology, 43(3) : 356- 369

Horn, A. B., Canizares, C., Gomez, Y.

Prevention of adolescent depression in the Spanish-speaking world

This paper aims at presenting programs targeted at the prevention of adolescent depression applied with Spanish-speaking populations that have been developed in Spanish-speaking countries and are mostly published in Spanish. These programs have been developed under different cultural contexts in Spain and Latin-America. The main goal of this paper is to make the studies and movements of the Spanish-speaking literature in this field accessible to the non-Spanish-speaking part of the research community. Therefore, after an introduction referring to possible cultural differences regarding depression in general and epidemiological basics, several programs are introduced. In total 11 programs will be shortly presented and discussed. After revising the programs it can be concluded that in the Spanish-speaking world many programs have been developed and conducted following current state of the art-approaches for adolescent depression prevention. Further research is needed especially targeting possible cultural and contextual aspects of prevention measures and their efficacy and efficiency. (copyright) 2014 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.

International Journal of Environmental Research & Public Health, 11(6) : 5665- 5683

Kim, S., Kim, G., Ki, J.

Effects of group art therapy combined with breath meditation on the subjective well-being of depressed and anxious adolescents

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of group art therapy, including breath meditation, on the subjective well-being of depressed and anxious youngsters. The subjects were 24 first-grade students at high school in a urban city (Daegu) of South Korea. The art therapy program was implemented in 13, 80-min sessions, held once or twice a week from September 28, 2010 to February 2011. The study tool was the subjective well-being scale of Han (1997), which was adapted from the subjective well- being scale of Campbell, Converse, and Rodgers (1976). The data were analyzed using SPSS WIN 18.0. To determine the homogeneity of the pre-test results, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was performed. To analyze effect of subjective well-being, two-way repeated measures ANOVA was performed. Scores were significantly higher in experimental group 1 (who experienced art therapy combined with breath meditation) and 2 (who experienced only art therapy), than in the control group (who received no therapy). Scores were significantly higher in group 1 than in group 2. The results were the same in the follow-up test, which indicated the durability of the effects.

Arts in Psychotherapy, 41(5) : 519- 526

Kennard, B. D., Emslie, G. J., Mayes, T. L., Nakonezny, P. A., Jones, J. M., Foxwell, A. A., King, J.

Sequential treatment with fluoxetine and relapse-prevention CBT to improve outcomes in pediatric depression

Objective: The authors evaluated a sequential treatment strategy of fluoxetine and relapse-prevention cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) to determine effects on remission and relapse in youths with major depressive disorder. Method: Youths 8-17 years of age with major depression were treated openly with fluoxetine for 6 weeks. Those with an adequate response (defined as a reduction of 50% or more on the Children's Depression Rating Scale-Revised [CDRS-R]) were randomly assigned to receive continued medication management alone or continued medication management plus CBT for an additional 6 months. The CBT was modified to address residual symptoms and was supplemented by well-being therapy. Primary outcome measures were time to remission (with remission defined as a CDRS-R score of 28 or less) and rate of relapse (with relapse defined as either a CDRS-R score of 40 or more with a history of 2 weeks of symptom worsening, or clinical deterioration). Results: Of the 200 participants enrolled in acute-phase treatment, 144 were assigned to continuation treatment with medication management alone (N=69) or medication management plus CBT (N=75). During the 30-week continuation treatment period, time to remission did not differ significantly between treatment groups (hazard ratio=1.26, 95% CI=0.87, 1.82). However, the medication management plus CBT group had a significantly lower risk of relapse than the medication management only group (hazard ratio=0.31, 95% CI=0.13, 0.75). The estimated probability of relapse by week 30 was lower with medication management plus CBT than with medication management only (9% compared with 26.5%). Conclusions: Continuation-phase relapse-prevention CBT was effective in reducing the risk of relapse but not in accelerating time to remission in children and adolescents with major depressive disorder.

American Journal of Psychiatry, 171(10) : 1083- 1090

Kolaitis, G., Giannakopoulos, G., Tomaras, V., Christogiorgos, S., Pomini, V., Layiou-Lignos, E., Tzavara, C., Rhode, M., Miles, G., Joffe, I., Trowell, J., Tsiantis, J.

Self-esteem and social adjustment in depressed youths: A randomized trial comparing psychodynamic psychotherapy and family therapy

Psychotherapy & Psychosomatics, 83(4) : 249-251

Kindt, K. C. M., Kleinjan, M., Janssens, J. M. A. M., Scholte, R. H. J.

Evaluation of a school-based depression prevention program among adolescents from low-income areas: A randomized controlled effectiveness trial

A randomized controlled trial was conducted among a potential high- risk group of 1,343 adolescents from low-income areas in The Netherlands to test the effectiveness of the depression prevention program Op Volle Kracht (OVK) as provided by teachers in a school setting. The results showed no main effect of the program on depressive symptoms at one-year follow-up. A moderation effect was found for parental psychopathology; adolescents who had parents with psychopathology and received the OVK program had less depressive symptoms compared to adolescents with parents with psychopathology in the control condition. No moderating effects on depressive symptoms were found for gender, ethnical background, and level of baseline depressive symptoms. An iatrogenic effect of the intervention was found on the secondary outcome of clinical depressive symptoms. Based on the low level of reported depressive symptoms at baseline, it seems that our sample might not meet the characteristics of a high-risk selective group for depressive symptoms. Therefore, no firm conclusions can be drawn about the selective potential of the OVK depression prevention program. In its current form, the OVK program should not be implemented on a large scale in the natural setting for non-high-risk adolescents. Future research should focus on high-risk participants, such as children of parents with psychopathology. (copyright) 2014 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.

International Journal of Environmental Research & Public Health, 11(5) : 5273-5293

Kramer, J., Conijn, B., Oijevaar, P., Riper, H.

Effectiveness of a web-based solution-focused brief chat treatment for depressed adolescents and young adults: randomized controlled trial

BACKGROUND: Up to 9% of young people suffer from depression. Unfortunately, many in need of help remain untreated. The Internet offers anonymous ways to help depressed youth, especially those who are reluctant to search for help because of fear of stigma.\rOBJECTIVE: Our goal was to evaluate the effectiveness of an individual chat treatment based on Solution-Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT) to young individuals aged 12-22 years with depressive symptoms by comparing it to a waiting list control group.\rMETHODS: For this study, 263 young people with depressive symptoms were randomized to the Web-based SFBT intervention, PratenOnline, or to a waiting list control condition. The chat treatment was delivered by trained professionals. Groups were compared on depressive complaints as measured by the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D) after 9 weeks and 4.5 months. For the chat group only, changes in depressive symptoms at 7.5 months after baseline were explored.\rRESULTS: The experimental SFBT condition (n=131) showed significantly greater improvement than the waiting list condition (n=132) in depressive symptoms at 9 weeks and 4.5 months on the CES-D, with a small between group effect size at 9 weeks (d=0.18, 95% CI -0.10 to 0.47) and a large effect size at 4.5 months (d=0.79, 95% CI 0.45-1.08). The percentage of participants showing a reliable and clinically significant change in depression was significantly larger for the SFBT intervention at 4.5 months only (28.2% vs 11.4% for the waiting list, P<.001, number needed to treat=6). At 7.5 months, the SFBT group showed further improvements. However, results have to be considered carefully because of high attrition rates.\rCONCLUSIONS: The Web-based SFBT chat intervention of PratenOnline was more effective than a waiting list control group in reducing depressive symptoms, and effects were larger at follow-up then at post-treatment. More studies are needed to find out if outcomes will be replicated, especially for those younger than 18 year old.\rTRIAL REGISTRATION: Netherlands Trial Register: NTR 1696; http://www.trialregister.nl/trialreg/admin/rctview.asp?TC=1696 (Archived by WebCite at http://www.webcitation.org/6DspeYWrJ).

Journal of Medical Internet Research, 16(5) : e141