Reach Out Rise Up: a 10 week text package for young people with mild to moderate depression and anxiety: A pilot study

Youthline is planning to extend the use of our online text platform infrastructure to pilot a programme to provide evidence-based therapeutic text support specifically designed for young people who come through Youthline’s telephone helpline or who contact Youthline’s clinical services presenting with mild to moderate anxiety and/or depression. Young people will be offered the option of the text package following an assessment along with other standard options i.e. face to face counselling, information or referral. The young people who consent to participating in the pilot will receive text messages for ten weeks includes three groups of text messages a week: 1. Monday 4pm: Psycho-educational message (to give young people a better understanding of their symptoms and help them to gain a sense of perspective on what they are experiencing) 2. Tuesday 4pm: Weekly challenge (to give them practical and achievable challenges each week based on evidence based Cognitive Behavioural Therapy principles for improving their feelings) 3. Friday 4pm: Inspirational message (to keep them motivated and to learn from the wisdom of others) Following the ten weeks all young people will be contacted by the researcher to complete a follow up assessment and to ask the participants about their experience using an evaluation questionnaire