Adolescent Depression Screening and Treatment in Mozambican Primary Care

July 14, 2023 updated by: Kathryn L. Lovero, PhD, Columbia University

Pilot Implementation of Depression Screening and Treatment for Adolescents in Mozambican Primary Care

This is a cluster-randomized pilot trial of depression screening and treatment implementation at four Youth-friendly Health Services (YFHS) in primary care clinics, two in Maputo City and two in Maputo Province. YFHS will be stratified by urbanicity, such that one YFHS in Maputo City and one YFHS in Maputo Province will be randomized to interpersonal psychotherapy (IPT)-A and the other YFHS in each location with be randomized to treatment as usual (TAU).

Study Overview

Status

Enrolling by invitation

Conditions

Intervention / Treatment

Detailed Description

Mental disorders are the leading cause of disability among adolescents worldwide, but only a very small minority, mostly in high-resource settings, have access to mental health care. The investigators' work is focused on understanding how to increase access to mental health care for adolescents in low-resource settings. In Mozambique, where this work is based, there are just 15 psychiatrists and 180 psychologists to serve its population of 29 million. In collaboration with local stakeholders, including governmental policymakers and primary care providers, the investigators developed a plan to implement care for adolescent depression in primary care settings. The investigators now aim to examine changes in adolescent depression and acceptability of primary care-based mental health services compared to treatment as usual.

Study Type

Interventional

Enrollment (Estimated)

114

Phase

  • Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

This section provides the contact details for those conducting the study, and information on where this study is being conducted.

Study Contact

Study Contact Backup

Study Locations

Participation Criteria

Researchers look for people who fit a certain description, called eligibility criteria. Some examples of these criteria are a person's general health condition or prior treatments.

Eligibility Criteria

Ages Eligible for Study

12 years to 19 years (Child, Adult, Older Adult)

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

No

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

  1. Providers:

    1. IPT-AG Arm: YFHS staff will be included in the study if they (a) conduct screening for depression and/or group IPT-AG and (b) provide consent to participate in the study.
    2. TAU Arm: YFHS staff will be included in the study if they (a) provide referrals for adolescents suspected of having mental illness or seeking mental health services and (b) provide consent to participate in the study. Treatment providers (Psychiatric Technicians and psychologists) will be included in the study if they (a) treat adolescents referred from participating YFHS for depression and (b) provide consent to participate in the study.

  2. Patients: In both study arms, adolescents attending one of the four study YFHS will be included in the study if they:

    1. are between the ages of 12-19 years;
    2. screen positive for depression;
    3. provide informed consent (ages 16 -19) or if their guardian provides informed consent and they provide assent (if ages 12-15).
  3. Study centers: must be clinics that have YFHS.

Exclusion Criteria:

In both study arms, adolescents will be excluded if they:

  1. are unable to participate in treatment due to acute illness; and/or
  2. are unable to communicate sufficiently in Portuguese to answer inclusion questions.

Study Plan

This section provides details of the study plan, including how the study is designed and what the study is measuring.

How is the study designed?

Design Details

  • Primary Purpose: Health Services Research
  • Allocation: Randomized
  • Interventional Model: Parallel Assignment
  • Masking: Single

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm
Intervention / Treatment
Active Comparator: TAU
Psychologists or PsyTechs in mental health services of primary care clinics will provide individual psychotherapy to depressed adolescents in the TAU arm. Local mental health professionals providing depression treatment in the TAU arm will not have been trained on IPT for adults or adolescents. Also, the two Ministry of Health psychologists trained as trainers of IPT-AG will not provide treatment in the TAU Arm.
Behavioral: Treatment as Usual (TAU)
Adolescents will be administered unstructured psychotherapy in individual sessions with a trained mental health specialist (i.e., psychologist or psychiatric technician).
Other Names:
  • TAU
Experimental: IPT-AG
Group IPT-AG will be facilitated by the trained providers at each YFHS using the IPT-AG manual adapted to the Mozambican context. Adolescents will participate in 12 weekly sessions. The first and last sessions will be one-on-one with the provider. The first session is used for the participant and provider to develop a treatment plan and the last session is to prepare for treatment termination. All other sessions will be conducted in groups of 6-8 adolescents.
Behavioral: Group Interpersonal Therapy for Adolescents (IPT-AG)
IPT-AG is a ten session, group therapy for adolescents. Each group contains 6-8 adolescents who attend weekly sessions together. The goals of IPT-AG are: 1) to reduce depression symptoms, and 2) to improve interpersonal relationships. Another aim of the group format is to increase adolescents' experience with positive social interactions and to reduce social isolation.

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
PHQ-A results
Time Frame: 6 months
The Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ)-A is a 9-item severity measure of depression for adolescents adapted from the PHQ-9. Questions ask how often an adolescent has been bothered by different depression symptoms in the past week, and responses of "not at all," "several days," "more than half the days," and "nearly every day" are given scores of 0 to 3. A total score is calculated by summing the value of all items and ranges from 0 (better outcome) to 27 (worse outcome).
6 months
IPT-AG Fidelity
Time Frame: 6 months
The Group IPT-AG Fidelity Checklist is a 14-item scale that measures provider fidelity to group interpersonal therapy for adolescents. Providers are scored for superior (1), satisfactory (2), or needs improvement (3) adherence to each item on the checklist, which each represent and essential element of treatment (e.g., gives hope that depression is treatable, links depression to interpersonal problems). The score of the 14-items is averaged to compute the IPT-AG Fidelity rating (1=superior, 2=satisfactory, 3=needs improvement), with 1 indicating a better outcome.
6 months

Collaborators and Investigators

This is where you will find people and organizations involved with this study.

Sponsor

Columbia University

Collaborators

National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)

Investigators

  • Principal Investigator: Kathryn Lovero, PhD, Columbia University

Study record dates

These dates track the progress of study record and summary results submissions to ClinicalTrials.gov. Study records and reported results are reviewed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to make sure they meet specific quality control standards before being posted on the public website.

Study Major Dates

Study Start (Actual)

April 1, 2023

Primary Completion (Estimated)

April 1, 2024

Study Completion (Estimated)

June 30, 2024

Study Registration Dates

First Submitted

July 25, 2022

First Submitted That Met QC Criteria

July 25, 2022

First Posted (Actual)

July 27, 2022

Study Record Updates

Last Update Posted (Actual)

July 17, 2023

Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria

July 14, 2023

Last Verified

July 1, 2023

More Information

Terms related to this study

Keywords

Additional Relevant MeSH Terms

Other Study ID Numbers

  • AAAT8351
  • K01MH120258 (U.S. NIH Grant/Contract)

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?

NO

Drug and device information, study documents

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product

No

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product

No

This information was retrieved directly from the website clinicaltrials.gov without any changes. If you have any requests to change, remove or update your study details, please contact register@clinicaltrials.gov. As soon as a change is implemented on clinicaltrials.gov, this will be updated automatically on our website as well.

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