Prevention of Depression and Anxiety in Subclinical Adolescents: Effects of a Transdiagnostic Internet-Delivered CBT Program

Julia C. Schmitt, Rosa M. Valiente, Julia García-Escalera, Sandra Arnáez, Victoria Espinosa, Bonifacio Sandín and Paloma Chorot
Additional contact information
Julia C. Schmitt: Departamento de Personalidad, Evaluación y Tratamientos Psicológicos, Facultad de Psicología, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED), 28040 Madrid, Spain
Rosa M. Valiente: Departamento de Personalidad, Evaluación y Tratamientos Psicológicos, Facultad de Psicología, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED), 28040 Madrid, Spain
Julia García-Escalera: Departamento de Personalidad, Evaluación y Tratamientos Psicológicos, Facultad de Psicología, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED), 28040 Madrid, Spain
Sandra Arnáez: Departamento de Personalidad, Evaluación y Tratamientos Psicológicos, Facultad de Psicología, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED), 28040 Madrid, Spain
Victoria Espinosa: Departamento de Personalidad, Evaluación y Tratamientos Psicológicos, Facultad de Psicología, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED), 28040 Madrid, Spain
Bonifacio Sandín: Departamento de Personalidad, Evaluación y Tratamientos Psicológicos, Facultad de Psicología, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED), 28040 Madrid, Spain
Paloma Chorot: Departamento de Personalidad, Evaluación y Tratamientos Psicológicos, Facultad de Psicología, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED), 28040 Madrid, Spain

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 9, 1-21

Abstract: Anxiety and depressive symptoms are common problems in adolescence that could be addressed by means of preventive interventions. Even though transdiagnostic cognitive behavior therapy (T-CBT) is potentially an ideal strategy to deal with anxiety and depression, it has rarely been used for preventive purposes. In addition, so far, no study has used internet-delivered T-CBT to prevent anxiety and depression in adolescents. This study aimed to examine the utility of AMTE, an internet-delivered T-CBT program, for the indicated prevention of anxiety and depression in adolescents. AMTE was applied to 30 adolescents (56.7% females, age range = 12–18 years, M age = 14.00, SD age = 1.89) who showed subclinical symptoms of anxiety and/or depression. Participants were assessed at pre- and post-treatment and follow-up (3 months). We found that after the program, the symptoms of self-reported anxiety and depression, clinician-rated symptom severity, and self-reported and parent-reported severity of the main problems had significantly improved. In addition, there were significant improvements in anxiety sensitivity and emotional avoidance. Finally, we found high feasibility and acceptability of the program. AMTE is feasible and potentially effective for the indicated prevention of anxiety and depression as well as of clinical transdiagnostic factors, in adolescents.

Keywords: transdiagnostic; AMTE; anxiety; depression; feasibility; emotion regulation; adolescents; indicated prevention; internet-delivered CBT; UP-A (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/9/5365/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/9/5365/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:19:y:2022:i:9:p:5365-:d:804341

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().