|
School-Based
Psychotherapy
Helps Depressed Teens
Psychotherapy
provided at school-based health clinics is an effective treatment
for adolescent depression, new research suggests.
Psychotherapy is a common treatment
for mental disorders that involves psychological methods, such
as counseling, rather than physiologic ones, like drugs.
The study, which took place in
an urban public school setting, involved 63 adolescents with depression
who were randomly selected to receive psychotherapy or usual treatment
at a school-based mental health clinic for 12 to 16 weeks. The
study group was 84 percent female and 71 percent Hispanic and
the average patient age was about 15 years.
Usual treatment "was whatever psychological
treatment the adolescents would have received in the school-based
clinic if the study had not been in place," the authors write.
Compared with usual care, psychotherapy
seemed to provide greater symptom relief and improvements in overall
function, lead author Dr. Laura Mufson, from the New York State
Psychiatric Institute, and colleagues note in the Archives of
General Psychiatry.
"Given the critical role that school
clinics play in the provision of care for adolescents, these findings
are of public health importance for improving the delivery of
mental health care to underserved, depressed adolescents," the
researchers state.
The findings show that staff working
in school-based health clinics can be taught to implement psychotherapy,
they add.
SOURCE: Archives of General Psychiatry,
June 2004.
Reference
Source 89
For more information on how to prevent other diseases, use
PreventDisease.com's "Quick
Prevention Resources".
|
