Advocate Children's Hospital participates in national study on teen depression

"Project CATCH IT" offers hope that an engaging online program may help manage depression in teens. The National Institute of Mental Health reports that more than 3 million adolescents suffered from a major depressive episode in 2016 alone.

Advocate Children's Hospital is a partner in the study being conducted by the University of Illinois at Chicago.

A $7-million award from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) will help them in developing programs to prevent depression among teens.

Project CATCH-IT, one of the programs being studied, has already shown promise in managing teen depression in early studies.

"Depression related to body image, peer pressure, academic expectations is so prevalent among teenagers," says Dr. Cheryl Lefaiver, director of the Advocate Center for Pediatric Research. "We are excited to be involved in leading edge research that could make a significant difference in how we engage adolescents who show signs of depression."

Drs. Cathy Joyce, Jeanne Lovett and Cynthia Mears, pediatricians from Advocate Children's Hospital, will join Dr. Lefaiver as investigators.

The randomized, multisite clinical trial will test two programs - an online intervention called CATCH-IT and an in-person group therapy-like intervention called POD - to see which is better at helping teens cope with tough situations and feel more hopeful.

Dr. Benjamin Van Voorhees, a pediatrician, is the principal investigator of the study, which will include a diverse group of more than 500 adolescents, age 13 to 19, from urban, suburban and rural areas throughout Illinois and Kentucky.

"Depression is a significant public health crisis with very few scalable preventive interventions, especially among children and adolescents," said Van Voorhees, professor and head of pediatrics in the UIC College of Medicine. "In the face of the lifelong effects of adolescent depression, including everything from difficulty in school and future relationships to risk of substance abuse, self-harm and even suicide, it is absolutely essential that we develop better preventive programs for this vulnerable group of people."

To study the two interventions, Van Voorhees and a team of clinicians and researchers will enroll teens in the study who will be randomized to either the CATCH-IT group or the POD group.

Teens in the CATCH-IT group, which is an acronym for Competent Adulthood Transition with Cognitive behavioral Humanistic and Interpersonal Training and which has been supported by the National Institute of Mental Health, will participate in a self-directed online learning program with 15 modules for teens.

Five modules will be available for parents.

Teens in the POD group, for Prevention of Depression group therapy model, will participate in 12 in-person group therapy sessions.

Five sessions will be held for parents.

The researchers will follow the teens for 18 months, at which point they will measure if and when a depressive episode develops.

The award has been approved pending completion of a business and programmatic review by PCORI staff and issuance of a formal award contract.

The research will begin upon issuance of approval from the University of Illinois at Chicago's Office for the Protection of Research Subjects.

For more information about Advocate Children's Hospital, visit www.advocatechildrenshospital.com.