Concurrent Treatment for Depressed Parents and DepressedAdolescents

Not Applicable

Completed

Conditions: Depression
Suicide

Interventions: Behavioral: Adolescent treatment only
Behavioral: Concurrent treatment

Registration Number: NCT00951821

Lead Sponsor: Brown University

Brief Summary: This study will develop an integrated treatment for adolescents who are depressed and suicidal and their parents who are depressed and have a history of suicidality.

Detailed Description: Depression, like many psychiatric disorders, has a genetic component that makes it more likely that members of the same family will have the disorder. Depression in parents, particularly mothers, may put the children at greater risk for depression. When an adolescent whose parent is depressed develops depression himself or herself, treating both the parent and the adolescent may be more effective than treating only the adolescent. This study will test a depression treatment that targets depressed suicidal adolescents with a parent or primary caretaker who is also depressed and has a history of suicidality.

Participation in this study will last 6 months. Participants will be randomly assigned to receive either concurrent parent and adolescent treatment or adolescent only treatment. For those assigned to concurrent treatment, both the adolescent participants and one of their parents will receive individual cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) counseling sessions and joint family counseling sessions. In the adolescent only treatment condition, adolescent participants will receive individual CBT sessions, but parents will not, and both will receive joint family sessions. Counseling sessions will last 1 hour and occur weekly for 3 months, and then every other week for 3 months. CBT identifies and attempts to change problematic thought patterns. All participants will receive medication consultation if necessary.

Participants will complete assessments at baseline, post-treatment, and 6 months after completing treatment. These assessments will include questionnaires and interviews about depression, suicidal thoughts, mood regulation, behavioral problems, and family. At post-treatment and the 6-month follow-up, participants will also be asked to give feedback about the counseling, medication consultation, and their satisfaction.

Recruitment & Eligibility

Status: COMPLETED

Sex: All

Target Recruitment: 24

Inclusion Criteria

Not provided

Exclusion Criteria

Not provided

Study & Design

Study Type: INTERVENTIONAL

Study Design: PARALLEL

Arm && Interventions

Group	Intervention	Description
Adolescent treatment only	Adolescent treatment only	Adolescent treatment only - Active Comparator: Only adolescent participants will receive cognitive behavioral therapy.
Concurrent treatment	Concurrent treatment	Concurrent treatment - experimental condition: Adolescent participants and their parents will receive concurrent cognitive behavioral therapy.

Primary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Beck Depression Inventory - Adolescent Report, Change in Symptom Level	12 months	self-report measure of depressed mood - range of scores 0 to 60; higher scores indicate worse depression. The data in this outcome refer to change from baseline to 12 month follow-up, per the adolescent self-report.

Secondary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Beck Suicide Scale - Adolescent Response	Measured at 12 months	measure of suicidal ideation - scale ranges from 0 to 38 - higher scores indicate higher suicidal ideation. These data refer to adolescent respondents. The outcome is a change score so range is from -38 to 38.