JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Few adolescents who experience depression or anxiety connect to mental health treatment. SOVA (Supporting Our Valued Adolescents) is a stakeholder-informed technology intervention which consists of two interactive websites, one for adolescents and one for parents. SOVA is designed to intervene on targets which may increase mental health treatment uptake when adolescents with depression or anxiety are identified in primary care settings.

Objective:

To describe the protocol for a pilot randomized controlled trial designed to refine recruitment and retention strategies, document intervention fidelity and implementation outcomes, and assess changes in health beliefs and knowledge, emotional/informational support, and parent-adolescent communication quality in adolescents and their parents.

Methods:

Adolescents identified with symptoms of depression or anxiety for which a healthcare provider recommends treatment and their parents will be recruited from an adolescent and young adult medicine clinic which provides primary and consultative care. Adolescent-parent dyads will be randomized 1:1 to both receive the SOVA websites and enhanced usual care or to enhanced usual care alone. Baseline measures and 6-week and 3-month outcomes will be collected by online self-report surveys and electronic health record review. The main outcome is 6-week study retention rate. Analyses will also assess changes in health beliefs and knowledge, emotional support, and parent-adolescent communication in both adolescents and their parents.

Results:

Recruitment commenced in April 2018.

Conclusions:

The findings of this research will inform design of a multi-site hybrid effectiveness-implementation RCT examining the effectiveness and optimal implementation strategies for use of SOVA in community primary care settings. Clinical Trial: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT03318666 ; https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03318666