Advocate Children’s Hospital is one of just six sites across the country to join a clinical trial testing how best to help teenagers improve their mood and learn coping skills to manage difficult situations.
More than 13% of adolescents are diagnosed with depressive disorders each year, according to the most recent statistics from the National Institute of Mental Health. Yet, there is no widely available intervention to prevent depressive episodes and other mental, emotional and behavioral disorders in adolescents or younger children.
Study participation is currently open at seven Advocate Children’s Hospital primary care clinics serving Chicago and its north and west suburban communities.
“As a leader in adolescent health care, Advocate Children’s Hospital is well equipped to help advance research into the increasingly important field of adolescent mental health,” said Cheryl Lefaiver, PhD, RN, Director of the Center for Child and Family Research at Advocate Aurora Research Institute. “Researchers for this study expect about half of the participants in the entire study to be enrolled at Advocate Children’s Hospital.”
The clinical trial, named PATHway, is further evaluating an online program that was shown to be effective in preventing depressive episodes by teaching teens skills to cope with stress and low mood. The program is called Competent Adulthood Transition with Cognitive-Behavioral Humanistic and Interpersonal Therapy (CATCH-IT).
“Although the current CATCH-IT program has proved beneficial, its complexity and length have seemingly become barriers for some teens to complete the program in its entirety,” said Cathy Joyce, MD, Medical Director for Adolescent Medicine and Advocate Children’s principal investigator for the study. “This new clinical trial aims to determine whether CATCH-IT can be scaled back and still be effective at helping teens prevent depression.”
The CATCH-IT program is a series of self-directed computer-based modules with four components – three for teens and one for parents. The PATHway study will randomly assign some, all or none of the four components to participants. Researchers will then follow and evaluate participants for 12 months, at which point all participants will be able to participate in the full CATCH-IT program.
“Early intervention capable of helping steer kids away from the path to depression is far preferable to treating such a difficult illness after it takes hold,” Dr. Joyce said. “If just one or two CATCH-IT components prove as effective as the entire program, teens and their families may find continued participation more tolerable as well as allow the program to be conducted by less-specialized primary care practices.”
The clinical trial is a collaboration with UI Health, part of the University of Illinois at Chicago, and is funded by the NIMH. Researchers plan to enroll approximately 400 teenage participants in the study.
To learn more about our research, visit aah.org/research.