Using a Mentoring Afterschool Program to Improve Adolescent Mental Health and Physical Activity: A Pilot Study

Summary

Coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic many youth are experiencing declines in physical activity and worsening mental health (e.g., depression symptoms). These declines are exacerbated among underserved youth who experience greater barriers to health services and exposure to life stressors that put them at increased risk for impaired mental, emotional, and behavioral health. School-based afterschool programming is an important strategy to reach this population of youth and provides intervention at a time when youth are likely to otherwise be in environments not supportive of health. Further participation in extracurricular activities has been shown to be a protective factor for youth mental health. However, consistent with the Behavioral Theory of Depression, youth who are currently inactive and who have depression symptoms are unlikely to participate in afterschool programming on their own and likely require heightened positive reinforcement when they do attend to encourage retention. Given the high prevalence of youth who experience symptoms of depression and resource and staffing challenges faced by many schools, the level of support needed to engage students to consistently participate and benefit from afterschool programming is often beyond the capacity of school-based afterschool programs. In partnership with a local afterschool program for middle school students in a low resource community, the investigators developed an augmented version of the current afterschool program in which college students are trained to mentor and assist in the afterschool program, expanding the capacity of the afterschool program to engage students.

The mentoring intervention uses behavioral activation principles to help youth connect their behaviors with their mood and support youth to engage in behaviors that improve their mood, including physical activity. The main purpose of this study is to pilot the feasibility of the newly developed intervention.

Conditions

• Depression

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

After School Plus

The afterschool program as usual runs M-H and consists of a variety of clubs from which middle school students chose to enroll for a semester (\~4 months). Clubs are offered on either a M/W or T/H schedule. Students receive a snack in the cafeteria each day before attending their class. Afterschool plus is the same as "Afterschool as Usual" with the addition of young adult mentors. Following snack, mentors will lead students in a short emotion regulation exercise including physical activity and breathing exercises. Mentors will prompt students to identify how they are feeling and make connections between the activities they are doing and their mood and then do activities with students in each class. On T/H, \~4 mentors will lead a new "DiscoverU " club which is based on behavioral activation principles and spends more time helping students identify and do more activities that improve their mood. The class promotes physical activity as an important strategy for mental health.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• University of Minnesota

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Katherine Hendel · University of Minnesota

Study Design

Allocation

NON_RANDOMIZED

Purpose

PREVENTION

Masking

NONE

Model

CROSSOVER

Eligibility

Min Age

9 Years

Max Age

99 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2024-09-24

Primary Completion

2025-06-17

Completion

2026-03-09

Countries

• United States

Study Locations