NCT07163013

Digital Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Chinese Adolescents With Depressive Symptoms（CADS-D )

Digital Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Chinese Adolescents With Depressive Symptoms（CADS-D ): A Randomized Clinical Trial

• Status: Recruiting
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 200 (estimated)
• Sponsor: First Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 12 Years – 18 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Not accepted

Summary

CADS-D aimes to evaluate the effectiveness and feasibility of a newly DCBT program for Chinese adolescents with depressive symptoms.

Detailed description

CADS-D is a single-center, two-arm, open-label randomized controlled trial. The trial targeted 12-18 years adolescents with depressive symptoms. Intervention group receives the digital cognitive behavioral therapy (DCBT) program for 6 weeks, while the control group receives the regular mental health curriculum provided by school staff for 6 weeks. Assessments are conducted at three time points: baseline, post-intervention (6 weeks), and at 3 months follow-up (18 weeks). The primary outcome is the effectiveness of DCBT. Secondary outcomes include the feasibility of DCBT, self-reported depressive severity, anxiety severity, psychological resilience, and the quality of life enjoyment and satisfaction.

Conditions

• Depressive Symptom

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
OTHER	Digital cognitive behavioral therapy(DCBT)	Moca is a mobile application designed to deliver structural CBT for adolescents with mood problems. Moca provides six-twelve guided sessions with an estimated proceeding duration of 25-45min each, developed to be processed weekly. The content of each session includes the introduction of the core concepts and principles of CBT, psychological counseling dialogue, skill exercises, and homework. Content presentation forms include text, animation, audio, comics, etc. At the end of each module, the participants will be asked to submit homework that will ask them to apply their learned skills to nursing or daily life situations that they personally perceive as stressful. Participants can review the completed sessions and record their mood status during the intervention period.
OTHER	Regular mental health curriculum	The content of regular mental health curriculum includes mental health education lecture. Few lectures address the knowledge and skills involved in CBT in such education lecture.

Timeline

• Start date: 2025-05-12
• Primary completion: 2026-06-30
• Completion: 2026-09-01
• First posted: 2025-09-09
• Last updated: 2026-01-27

Locations

1 site across 1 country: China