Adolescent Interpersonal Counseling in Primary Care

Summary

The demand for prevention and treatment of adolescent depression has rapidly increased over years. A national project to improve treatment of adolescent depression in primary care has taken place in Finland starting 2020.

The goal of this prospective observational cohort study is to describe pathways to mental health services in adolescents with depressive symptoms. The main questions it aims to answer are:

* Do young people reporting depressive symptoms have equal access to treatment?
* How is it best to recognize those adolescents who will benefit from IPC-A?

Adolescents who participate in the study will

* complete a survey on protective and risk factors of depression three times over 6 months
* report possible depressive symptoms every two weeks over 6 months
* report whether they needed and received help, motivation for treatment, and benefits and harms from treatment

We will also collect

* information from one of caretakers with two surveys within 6 month- intervals on their view on adolescent's need for support, strengths and risks, and benefits and harms from treatment where applicable
* where applicable, from the professional who provided support after the intervention on their training and competence, as well as content of and response to treatment
* register data to estimate overall provision and cost of social welfare and health care services one year preceding the study and over 2 to 10 years after the observation period

Researchers will compare an intervention that is new in Finland, adolescent interpersonal counseling (IPC-A), to other treatments of depression, to see if it is equal to or better than other treatments of depression.

Conditions

• Depressive Symptoms Mild to Moderate in Severity
• Major Depressive Disorder

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Interpersonal counseling

A structured psychotherapeutic intervention to prevent depression or treat mild to moderate depression. IPC-A is a brief, individual-based intervention (3-8 sessions). The focus is on interpersonal relations as a factor of resilience in depressive symptoms. IPC-A is a shorter form of IPT-A, developed by prof. Myrna Weissman and team.

BEHAVIORAL

Treatment as usual

Any other behavioral or medical support or depression indicated by depressive symptoms or depression. This is based on adolescent, caretaker and professional's report.

OTHER

No support, intervention or other treatment

The group will comprise those adolescents who report sustained depression but do not seek or receive support over 6 months of follow-up based on adolescent and caretaker's report

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Strategic Research Council of Finland

  collaborator UNKNOWN

• University of Helsinki

  collaborator OTHER

• University of Eastern Finland

  collaborator OTHER

• Tampere University

  collaborator OTHER

• Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare

  lead OTHER_GOV

Principal Investigators

• Outi Linnaranta, MD, PhD · Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare

Eligibility

Min Age

13 Years

Max Age

16 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2024-03-25

Primary Completion

2026-05-31

Completion

2039-12-31

Countries

• Finland

Study Locations