None listed
Conditions
Brief summary
The importance of identifying and targeting early symptoms of poor mental health in adolescence cannot be underestimated. Adolescence offers a critical window for developing emotional resilience and healthy coping strategies, which could improve the trajectory of mental health across the lifespan. Yet mental health disorders form a substantial proportion of overall disease burden in young people in all societies (Patel, Flisher, Hetrick, & McGorry, 2007). Internalising disorders, such as anxiety and depression, are consistently reported as the most common mental health problems amongst Australian children aged between 7 and 14 years and are often less likely to be detected compared to externalising disorders (Australian Institute of Health, 2012; Klein, Jacobs, & Reinecke, 2007; Letcher, Sanson, Smart, & Toumbourou, 2012; Seligman, Ernst, Gillham, Reivich, & Linkins, 2009). Poor mental health often begins in early adolescence (12 years of age), and a shift toward early intervention has seen some promise in preventing the trajectory of later diagnosable conditions as well as enabling adolescents to full their potential (Klein, et al., 2007; McGorry, Bates, & Birchwood, 2013). Perfectionism has recently gained attention as is a transdiagnositic entity. This means it underlies many other series pathologies such as depression, social anxiety, generalized anxiety disorder, eating disorders and even personality disorders (Dimaggio et al., 2015; Holland, Bodell, & Keel, 2013). Perfectionism refers to a tendency to strive for flawlessness and set exceedingly high standards for performance, accompanied by tendencies for overly critical evaluations (Stoeber, Eklund, & Tenenbaum, 2014). Its transdiagnostic nature positions perfectionism to be an ideal target for early intervention in addition to low mood and social worry to prevent the longitudinal development of future mental health disorders. Self-compassion is a construct gaining prominence over recent years and may directly target the key features of perfectionism, low mood and social worry (Neff, 2011; Neff & Germer, 2013; Neff, 2010). Self-compassion refers to an adaptive way of relating to one’s self when considering personal inadequacies or difficult life circumstances. Self-compassion has also been shown to be an effective intervention target for adolescents suffering from negative world views (Neff, 2010). When working with a non-clinical high school population, it is important to ensure content is relevant and engaging and appropriate for this population. Thus the combined framework of CBT and Self-Compassion has been used to develop a psycho-educational workshop series, Compassionate Brain. In addition, high schools may be an appropriate target for early intervention programs given their access to a large group and capacity for the provision of ongoing support. The current study seeks to evaluate the effectiveness of the Compassionate Brain program in an adolescent population.
Interventions
The Compassionate Brain Program is a novel psycho-educational workshop series that has been developed for middle school students. This study is a controlled trial seeking to evaluate the effectiveness of this program and to also better understand the relationships between emotional regulation, perfectionism, low mood, anxiety, stress and self-compassion in an adolescent population.
The Compassionate Brain program has been developed within a Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Self-Compassion fram
The Compassionate Brain Program is a novel psycho-educational workshop series that has been developed for middle school students. This study is a controlled trial seeking to evaluate the effectiveness of this program and to also better understand the relationships between emotional regulation, perfectionism, low mood, anxiety, stress and self-compassion in an adolescent population. The Compassionate Brain program has been developed within a Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Self-Compassion framework. The program seeks to provide psychoeducation about thoughts, emotions, and behavior as well as encourage the development of skills such as mindfulness, self-compassion and helping thinking styles. Content will be interactive, including experiential exercises, role plays, and mindfulness practice. The program will be delivered by a registered clinical psychologist face-to-face and involve both lectures and small group work. School teachers will be involved in assisting the small group work. The intervention will be delivered over a total of 8 sessions for the intervention group. The duration of each session will be approximately one hour, conducted at the school the students are currently attending. Dependent on school timetabling, the sessions will be run either once a week or once a fortnight. Thus total duration of the intervention will be 8-16 weeks. A series of questionnaires will be administered to measure outcomes prior to the program starting, at the end of the program and a follow-up set of questionnaires will be administered approximately 3-4months later post-program completion. The primary outcomes to be measured are difficulties in emotional regulation, perfectionism, low mood, stress, and anxiety. Intervention adherence will also be assessed by recording attendance of students during each session.
Sponsors
Australian Catholic University
Study design
Allocation
Randomised controlled trial
Intervention model
Parallel
Primary purpose
Educational / counselling / training
Masking
Open (masking not used)
Eligibility
Sex/Gender
All
Age
10 Years to 15 Years
Healthy volunteers
Yes
Inclusion criteria
Middle school students
Exclusion criteria
Not providing consent or not being enrolled in the specific middle schools involved in the study .
Outcome results
None listed