ReSET - building resilience through socioemotional training
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Developing a school-based, transdiagnostic, preventative intervention for adolescent mental health
IRAS ID
322531
Contact name
Pasco Fearon
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University College London
ISRCTN Number
ISRCTN88585916
Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier
Z6364106/2021/12/78 health research, UCL Data Protection Registration Number
Duration of Study in the UK
2 years, 8 months, 31 days
Research summary
Seventy-five percent of mental health (MH) problems emerge before the age of 18 and there is a need for effective mental health interventions that can be implemented at an early stage to help prevent or reduce mental health problems in adolescence and later life. Emotion processing and social skills are under continued development during adolescence and there is considerable evidence that these skills are closely interlinked and underpin resilience and vulnerability to mental health problems in adolescence. However, these mechanisms are often studied in isolation (e.g. cognitive psychology vs. social science). Therefore, examining the close interplay between them could provide a much-needed new approach to mental health prevention for young people and yield great scientific and clinical benefit.
This project will develop and test a novel transdiagnostic, school-based preventative intervention that integrates targeted training of emotion processing and interpersonal skills in adolescents (aged 11-14 years) identified at-risk of developing poor mental health. The training is based on [1] an adaption of Interpersonal Therapy (IPT), an evidence-based therapy, originally developed to treat depression and [2] cognitive-emotion training; to develop emotion processing and regulation skills. IPT has been previously adapted as a group intervention for adolescents (IPT-AST), which focuses on a) social difficulties, b) emotion regulation and conflicts in relationships, and c) interpersonal connections, social problem solving and communication skills. Individual and group IPT-AST have been shown to improve wellbeing for young people with depression, and there is increasing evidence for its effectiveness for a range of mental health outcomes. A comprehensive battery of pre-and-post intervention outcome measures will be used to evaluate the benefits of this new intervention for young people whilst qualitative feedback (focus groups/interviews) will assess the feasibility and acceptability of the intervention for use in school settings.
REC name
North West - Greater Manchester Central Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
23/NW/0145
Date of REC Opinion
18 Jul 2023
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion