Depression is a barrier to academic success. Rates of depression are on the rise for school-aged children, particularly youth who live in communities with high levels of poverty.
Unfortunately, access to treatment does not ensure that youth will attend and complete treatment, and rates of engagement in treatment for depression are lower for Black adolescents due to negative perceptions of services and providers and reluctance to endorse symptoms.
The McSilver Institute for Poverty Policy and Research at New York University received a three-year research grant from the National Institute of Mental Health to study the effectiveness of a treatment intervention for keeping Black adolescents engaged in depression treatment.
The Making Connections Intervention (MCI) is designed to improve engagement, perceived relevance, and treatment satisfaction among depressed, Black adolescents.
“Many engagement interventions focus on getting populations to the door of the therapist’s office; but this one focuses on how engagement during the treatment course affects outcomes, both by the young person being treated, and the caregiver who must support that treatment in order for it to be successful.”
Dr. Michael Lindsey engaged Ker-twang to co-create, design, and develop brief, digital interventions to support and amplify the impact of the MCI. Together, we established a Youth Advisory Panel with 15 Black youth to design a range of unique digital interventions including the MCI Headway App and a series of youth-led videos addressing competing alternatives to therapy.
The MCI is being tested in a randomized control trial with Black adolescents in grades 6-12 who attend New York City (NYC) Department of Education (DOE) Public Schools and The Harlem Children’s Zone (HCZ).
The main outcomes that we are measuring are the effects of the intervention on adolescent and caregiver engagement and on adolescent depression. Levels of suicidal ideation is a secondary outcome. We will also examine related factors, like adolescent help-seeking behavior and parental knowledge of mental health services, that can account for treatment outcomes and that will allow the MCI to be strengthened in future roll-outs of the intervention in school settings.
This study addresses an important public health issue: How best to connect Black adolescents with depression to treatment in clinically meaningful ways, and how best to deliver evidence-based treatment to them through school-based services.