Resilience School-Based Intervention in Adolescents at Risk: A Clustered Randomized Control Trial.

Background Some studies with adolescents reported the impact of Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic on the mental health. In the literature, resilience was related with positive mental health and was defined by some authors as a good mental health and a good psychosocial functioning despite exposure to risk or adversity (Collishaw et al., 2016). Additionally, resilience was also considered important to develop interventions to prevent or treat mental disorders, particularly anxiety, depression, and stress. Schools have been identified as one of the key settings for promoting resilience among children and young populations in this time of COVID-19 pandemic, where social inequalities have become even more evident and depressive symptoms have increased. The purpose of this trial is to assess the effectiveness of a resilience school-based intervention in adolescents and to understand whether the school training can improve levels of resilience or increase psychological wellbeing, while reducing depressed mood.

Hypothesis: Adolescents at risk between 12 and 15 years of age who receive a resilience school-based intervention by school nurses, will obtain higher scores on scales of resilience with respect to the control group, just after the intervention and 6-month post-intervention

Method:

The study is a cluster randomized controlled trial (RCT). Schools that want to participate, will sign an agreement to participate in the project Schools will be randomly allocated in control and intervention groups by external researcher using a computer-generated random numbers.

The intervention will be carried out during the school period (January to June 2022), by primary health care nurses who are part of the committee of experts and the research team. Students will follow a specific training consisting of six 55-minute sessions, once a week.