NCT05476237

Adolescent Depression Screening and Treatment in Mozambican Primary Care

Pilot Implementation of Depression Screening and Treatment for Adolescents in Mozambican Primary Care

• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 95 (actual)
• Sponsor: Columbia University · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 12 Years – 65 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Not accepted

Summary

This is a cluster-randomized pilot trial of depression screening and treatment implementation at four Youth-friendly Health Services (YFHS) in primary care clinics, two in Maputo City and two in Maputo Province. YFHS will be stratified by urbanicity, such that one YFHS in Maputo City and one YFHS in Maputo Province will be randomized to interpersonal psychotherapy (IPT)-A and the other YFHS in each location with be randomized to treatment as usual (TAU).

Detailed description

Mental disorders are the leading cause of disability among adolescents worldwide, but only a very small minority, mostly in high-resource settings, have access to mental health care. The investigators' work is focused on understanding how to increase access to mental health care for adolescents in low-resource settings. In Mozambique, where this work is based, there are just 15 psychiatrists and 180 psychologists to serve its population of 29 million. In collaboration with local stakeholders, including governmental policymakers and primary care providers, the investigators developed a plan to implement care for adolescent depression in primary care settings. The investigators now aim to examine changes in adolescent depression and acceptability of primary care-based mental health services compared to treatment as usual.

Conditions

• Depression
• Adolescent Behavior

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
BEHAVIORAL	Group Interpersonal Therapy for Adolescents (IPT-AG)	IPT-AG is a ten session, group therapy for adolescents. Each group contains 6-8 adolescents who attend weekly sessions together. The goals of IPT-AG are: 1) to reduce depression symptoms, and 2) to improve interpersonal relationships. Another aim of the group format is to increase adolescents' experience with positive social interactions and to reduce social isolation.
BEHAVIORAL	Treatment as Usual (TAU)	Adolescents will be administered unstructured psychotherapy in individual sessions with a trained mental health specialist (i.e., psychologist or psychiatric technician).

Timeline

• Start date: 2023-04-01
• Primary completion: 2024-05-16
• Completion: 2024-09-27
• First posted: 2022-07-27
• Last updated: 2026-02-27
• Results posted: 2026-02-27

Locations

4 sites across 1 country: Mozambique