Topic “Childhood and development”

Systems of Support (S.O.S.) is a research study that provides treatment for childhood depression. Funded by the National Institutes of Health, the aim of the S.O.S. Program is to learn new and better ways for treating childhood depression. In this safe, supportive, and confidential study, experienced therapists work with your child and family to improve depression and quality of life. A multi-site treatment study located at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and Boston University (BU), the S.O.S. Program welcomes as participants children 8-12 years of age with childhood depression and at least one parent willing to take part in treatment.

Children eligible for the study will participate in one of two therapeutic programs designed to treat childhood depression:

• One program focuses on individual treatment in which the child will work one-on-one with a therapist. The goal is to provide emotional support and to encourage healthy behavior and coping.
• The other treatment program focuses on working with the family to help the child and parents work together to solve problems. The goal is to strengthen the child’s coping and teach the family how best to encourage their child’s healthy behavior.

Project Overview and Aims

Building on our prior work in which we developed a manualized Family Focused Treatment (FFT), we propose a 2-site randomized controlled trial to evaluate the efficacy of FFT for childhood depressive disorders, as compared to an individual psychotherapy approach similar to standard community care.
The procedure involving human subjects will proceed as follows: we will enroll 140 school-aged depressed youth diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorders and/or Dysthymic Disorder drawn from two sites: Boston University and UCLA. Participants will randomly be assigned into one of two conditions:

1. Family Focused Treatment (FFT) or
2. Individual Psychotherapy modeled after standard community care (IP).

Intervention effects will be evaluated at baseline, at an assessment following a 14-week intervention, and at a 9-month post-treatment follow-up assessment.

The baseline assessment will be done after explaining the study to the potential subjects and their parent(s), and then getting proper consent from both the parent and the youth. The subject and parents will then be interviewed and given questionnaires. Baseline assessments will last about three hours. If the child meets criteria, the family will be randomly assigned to either FFT or IP. Assignment to treatment groups will be on a random basis, and this is emphasized in the informed consent. The psychosocial treatment phase will begin about 1-2 weeks after completing the initial assessment. Psychosocial treatment will consist of roughly 1 hour sessions that will be administered for 14 weeks.

The FFT treatment is an intervention that involves five modules: psychoeducation, communication training, fun activities planning, problem-solving skills training, and termination. During each phase, concepts will be introduced slowly to help reduce children’s anxiety and to increase generalization of skills and concepts. On the other hand, IP reflects treatment in usual care settings. The therapist will conduct individual sessions with the child in a space designed to enhance child-based treatments (with toys, art supplies, etc). Therapeutic goals will be addressed through reflection of feelings and understanding the child’s perception of the context of expressed feelings.