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With as many as 13% of adolescents diagnosed with depressive disorders each year, prevention of depressive disorders has become a key priority for the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). Currently, we have no widely available interventions to prevent these disorders. To address this need, we developed a multi-health system collaboration to develop and evaluate the primary care based technology "behavioral vaccine," Competent Adulthood Transition with Cognitive-Behavioral Humanistic and Interpersonal Therapy (CATCH-IT). The full CATCH-IT program demonstrated evidence of efficacy in prevention of depressive episodes in clinical trials. However, CATCH-IT became larger and more complex across trials, creating issues with adherence and scalability. We will use a multiphase optimization strategy approach to optimize CATCH-IT. The theoretically grounded components of CATCH-IT include: behavioral activation, cognitive-behavioral therapy, interpersonal psychotherapy, and parent program. We will use a 4-factor (2x2x2x2) fully crossed factorial design with N = 16 cells (25 per cell, after allowing 15% dropout) to evaluate the contribution of each component. Eligible at-risk youth will be high school students 13 through 18 years old, with subsyndromal symptoms of depression. The study design will enable us to eliminate non-contributing components while preserving efficacy and to optimize CATCH-IT by strengthening tolerability and scalability by reducing resource use. By reducing resource use, we anticipate satisfaction and acceptability will also increase, preparing the way for an implementation trial. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The majority of mental, emotional, and behavioral (MEB) disorders have an initial onset before age 24, with 20% annual incidence, and with major depressive disorder (MDD) being the most common MEB. Health systems may be able to reduce costs by transitioning from the current treatment-focused model for MDD to a prevention model. However, evidence is needed for (1) the comparative effectiveness of a "scalable intervention" and (2) an implementation model for such a scalable intervention in the primary care setting. This paper describes a comparative effectiveness trial evaluating the efficacy of two evidence-based cognitive-behavioral prevention (CBP) programs: Teens Achieving Mastery over Stress (TEAMS), the "gold standard," group therapy model, and Competent Adulthood Transition with Cognitive Behavioral, Humanistic and Interpersonal Training (CATCH-IT), a scalable, self-directed, technology-based model. Eligible adolescents, age 13–19, are offered one of these two depression prevention programs across five health systems (30 clinics) in urban and suburban Chicago, IL, rural Western IL, and Louisville, KY. We are comprehensively evaluating patient-centered outcomes and stakeholder-valued moderators of effect versus baseline at two, six, 12, and 18-month assessment points. Using a hybrid clinical trial design that simultaneously examines the implementation process, the study is also assessing adolescents', parents', and providers' experiences (e.g., efficacy, time commitment, cultural acceptability) within each intervention approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Youth with intellectual and/or developmental disabilities (IDD) often struggle with depression and anxiety, which adversely impacts transition to adulthood. Integrated behavioral health care coordination, wherein care coordinators and behavioral health specialists collaborate to provide systematic, cost-effective, patient-centered care, is a promising strategy to improve access to behavioral health services and address factors that impact transition to adulthood, including depression/anxiety symptoms. Current care coordination models (e.g., Title V Maternal and Child Health Bureau [MCHB]) do not include behavioral health services. The CHECK (Coordinated HealthCarE for Complex Kids) mental health model, hereby refined and renamed BEhavioral Health Stratified Treatment (B.E.S.T.), is a behavioral health intervention delivery program designed for integration into care coordination programs. This study aims to determine whether an integrated behavioral health care coordination strategy (i.e., MCHB care coordination plus B.E.S.T.) would be more acceptable and lead to better youth health and transition outcomes, relative to standard care coordination (i.e., MCHB care coordination alone). Results would guide future investment in improving outcomes for youth with IDD. This study is a two-arm randomized clinical trial of 780 transition-aged youth with IDD (13–20 years) to evaluate the comparable efficacy of MCHB Care Coordination alone vs. MCHB Care Coordination plus B.E.S.T. on the following outcomes: 1) decreased symptoms and episodes of depression and anxiety over time; 2) improved health behaviors, adaptive functioning and health related quality of life; 3) increased health care transition (HCT) readiness; and 4) improved engagement and satisfaction with care coordination among stakeholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Depression is a debilitating and difficult-to-treat condition that affects interpersonal, school, and work functioning. Baseline functioning, particularly self-reported quality of family relationships, and school functioning predicted likelihood of depression recurrence for at-risk adolescents up to 5 years later. [Extracted from the article]