Effects of a Single-session Implicit Theories of Personality Intervention on Recovery From Social Stress and Long-term Psychological Functioning in Early Adolescents
试验速览
- 阶段
- 不适用
- 状态
- 已完成
- 入组人数
- 96
- 试验地点
- 2
- 主要终点
- Change in Children's Depression Inventory (CDI) From Baseline to 9-month Follow-up
研究概览
简要总结
The goal of the project is to test whether a single-session intervention teaching incremental theories of personality, or the belief that one's personality is malleable, can strengthen recovery from social stress and reduce the development of anxiety and depression during early adolescence. Results may suggest a scalable, cost-effective approach to improving youths' coping capacities and preventing adverse mental health outcomes over time.
详细描述
Efforts to prevent and reduce mental health problems in youths have advanced greatly in recent years. However, these advances have not reduced rates of youth mental illness on a large scale. Thus, a great need exists for novel, scalable, and low-cost approaches to reducing mental health problems in youth. Ideally, such approaches would be mechanism-targeted: that is, they would act on specific developmental processes that underlie psychological disorders. The proposed research aims to address this need by testing whether a single-session intervention teaching incremental theories of personality, or the belief that one's personality is malleable-as opposed to entity theories of personality, or the belief that one's personality is fixed and unchangeable-can strengthen recovery from social stress and prevent the development of anxiety and depression during early adolescence. Compared to incremental theories, entity theories of personal traits have demonstrated cross-sectional and prospective relations with greater anxiety and depression in youths. Further, a single-session incremental personality theories intervention reduced the development of depressive symptoms in a community sample of adolescents, supporting these theories as powerful intervention and/or prevention targets, even when taught in a brief format. Specifically, this project has two aims. Aim 1 is to evaluate the effect of the implicit theories intervention on two candidate mechanisms of action, or targets, identified by prior research: arousal (measured via physiological reactivity following social stress) and loss (here, perceived loss of behavioral control) in youths 12-15 years of age. Following a lab-based social stress induction, I hypothesize that participants receiving the intervention will recover from stress more rapidly, as indicated by measures of arousal (heart rate variability; electrodermal activity levels) and self-reported loss (increased self-reported perceived control) compared to participants who do not receive the intervention. Aim 2 is to evaluate the effects of the single-session incremental theories intervention on anxiety and depression over a nine-month follow-up period. I will test whether the intervention, compared to a control protocol, reduces symptoms of anxiety an depression the development of anxiety and depression; I will also assess whether this change is a direct result of shifts in the two aforementioned targets (arousal; loss). I predict more positive trajectories in anxiety and depression for youth receiving the intervention, relative to those who do not receive the intervention, across nine months. I will also test whether these trajectories are mediated by changes in the targets described in Aim 1. Finally, regardless of outcomes for Aims 1 and 2, baseline, postintervention, and 9-month measures will be used to map links among implicit theories, interventions targeting those theories, social stress recovery, and youth anxiety and depression over time. Findings may suggest a cost-effective, scalable intervention that improves youth resiliency and mental health.
研究设计
- 研究类型
- Interventional
- 分配方式
- Randomized
- 干预模型
- Parallel
- 主要目的
- Prevention
- 盲法
- Triple (Participant, Investigator, Outcomes Assessor)
入排标准
- 年龄范围
- 12 Years 至 15 Years（Child）
- 性别
- All
- 接受健康志愿者
- 是
入选标准
- •Ages 12 to 15 (inclusive) at time of study enrollment
- •One or more of the following (3) criteria, all assessed through an initial parent phone screen: (1) t-score of >60 (84th percentile) on any disorder subscale of the Revised Child Anxiety and Depression Scale-Parent (RCADS-P, Ebesutani et al., 2010); (2) school-based accommodations for anxiety- or depression-related symptoms, such as through an Individual Education Plan (IEP) or a 504 plan; (3) anxiety and/or depression treatment sought for the youth within the previous 3 years.
排除标准
- •Psychosis, intellectual disability, pervasive developmental/autism spectrum disorder, and suicidal ideation leading to hospitalization or attempts within the past year.
研究组 & 干预措施
Implicit Theories of Personality Program
This program is self-administered, computer-based, and 30 minutes in length. Content is designed to maximize relevance for youths with internalizing distress. The program includes 5 elements: 1. An introduction the concept of neuroplasticity; 2. Testimonials from older youths describing beliefs that people's traits are malleable, given the brain's capacity for change; 3. Further vignettes by older youths describing times when they used "growth mindsets" to cope with peer rejection, hopelessness, and feared embarrassment; 4. A worksheet describing strategies for applying these principles to participants' lives; 5. An exercise wherein participants write notes to younger children, using newly-gleaned information about the malleability of personal traits to help them to cope with setbacks
干预措施: Implicit Theories of Personality Program (Other)
Control Program
The Control Program is a computer-based session of supportive therapy (ST), designed to encourage youths to identify and express feelings. ST does not teach specific skills or beliefs and has been shown to be less effective than cognitive-behavioral interventions in reducing youth internalizing distress. Here, ST was designed to control for nonspecific intervention elements (eg. completing an interactive computer program) and to encourage youths to share emotions with others. ST included the same number of reading/writing activities as the experimental program and took the same amount of time (30 mins.) to complete.
干预措施: Control Program (Other)
结局指标
主要结局
Change in Children's Depression Inventory (CDI) From Baseline to 9-month Follow-up
时间窗: Baseline and 3-, 6-, and 9-month (final) follow-up
the Children's Depression Inventory, a 27-item self-report questionnaire that measures cognitive, affective, and behavioral symptoms of depression. Items are scored from 0-2, and scores range from 0 to 44; higher scores indicate greater symptom severity. The CDI is reliable and valid. It can distinguish youths with more or less severe depressive symptoms, as well as youths at risk for depression from non-depressed youths. Suicide- and self-harm related questions were removed for the purposes of this study.
Change in Children's Depression Inventory - Parent (CDI-P) From Baseline to 9-month Follow-up
时间窗: Baseline and 3-, 6-, and 9-month (final) follow-up
the Children's Depression Inventory, a 27-item self-report questionnaire that measures cognitive, affective, and behavioral symptoms of depression. Items are scored from 0-2, and scores range from 0 to 44; higher scores indicate greater symptom severity. The CDI and the parent analog (CDI-P) is reliable and valid. It can distinguish youths with more or less severe depressive symptoms, as well as youths at risk for depression from non-depressed youths. Suicide- and self-harm related questions were removed for the purposes of this study.
Change in Screen for Child Anxiety Related Disorders - Child (SCARED-C) From Baseline to 9-month Follow-up
时间窗: Baseline and 3-, 6-, and 9-month (final) follow-up
Anxiety symptoms were assessed at baseline and at each follow-up point using the Screen for Child Anxiety and Related Disorders - Child and Parent versions (SCARED-C/SCARED-P). The SCARED-C and SCARED-P are child and parent versions of the same 41-item questionnaire measure of pediatric anxiety. Both differentiate between clinically anxious and nonanxious psychiatrically ill youth. Youths/parents respond to items using a 3-point Likert scale describing the degree to which statements are true about them; scores range from 0 to 82. Internal consistency, test-retest reliability, and construct validity of the SCARED are strong (Hale, Raaijmakers, Muris, \& Meeus, 2005; Myers \& Winters, 2002). In this study, the SCARED-C/P Total Scores were used and derived by summing all 41 items, with higher scores reflecting higher levels of anxiety.
Change in Screen for Child Anxiety Related Disorders - Parent (SCARED-P) From Baseline to 9-month Follow-up
时间窗: Baseline and 3-, 6-, and 9-month (final) follow-up
Anxiety symptoms were assessed at baseline and at each follow-up point using the Screen for Child Anxiety and Related Disorders - Child and Parent versions (SCARED-C/SCARED-P). The SCARED-C and SCARED-P are child and parent versions of the same 41-item questionnaire measure of pediatric anxiety. Both differentiate between clinically anxious and nonanxious psychiatrically ill youth. Youths/parents respond to items using a 3-point Likert scale describing the degree to which statements are true about them; scores range from 0 to 82. Internal consistency, test-retest reliability, and construct validity of the SCARED are strong. In this study, the SCARED-C/P Total Scores were used and derived by summing all 41 items, with higher scores reflecting higher levels of anxiety.
次要结局
- Primary Control Scale for Children (PCSC)(Baseline, immediately post-intervention, and 3-, 6-, and 9-month (final) follow-up)
- Electrodermal Activity (EDA) Recovery Slope(Assessed at immediate post-intervention only)
- Heart Rate Variability (HRV) Recovery Slope(Assessed at immediate post-intervention only)
- Secondary Control Scale for Children (SCSC)(Baseline, immediately post-intervention, and 3-, 6-, and 9-month (final) follow-up)
研究者
Jessica Schleider
PhD candidate
Harvard University