Preventing depression in secondary school students

Preventing depression in secondary school students
Helen Christensen and colleagues conducted a cluster randomized trial to investigate the effectiveness of an intervention for the prevention of depression in secondary school students.

The study, published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, reported on the results of a trial of the SPARX-R program, a gamified online cognitive behavior intervention that is delivered to students prior to facing a significant stressor - in this case final secondary school exams.

A total of 540 final-year students from 10 secondary schools in Sydney, Australia took part, and clusters at the school level were randomly allocated to SPARX-R or the control intervention (lifeSTYLE, an online interactive control program). Interventions were delivered weekly in class under teacher supervision, in seven 20- to 30-minute modules.

Symptoms of depression were measured by the Major Depression Inventory (MDI).
Students in the SPARX-R group showed a greater reduction in MDI scores than those in the control group, both post-intervention and at the 6-month follow-up. Effect sizes were small post-intervention (+0.29) and at the 6-month (+0.21) and 18-month follow-ups (+0.33).

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