Can teens be ‘vaccinated’ against depression?

As the saying goes, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” That also holds true for mental health issues, says Dr. Huma Khan, an adolescent medicine physician at Advocate Children’s Hospital.

More than 13% of teens are diagnosed with depressive disorders each year, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. Yet only 40% of those teens are receiving treatment.

“With many people facing a lack of access to mental health care, it is so important for us to find ways to prevent depression before it takes hold,” Dr. Khan says.

There are currently no widely available interventions to prevent depressive episodes and other mental, emotional and behavioral disorders in adolescents or younger children. To help solve this problem, Advocate Children’s is one of just six sites across the country studying an online depression prevention program for teens.

Call it a behavioral vaccine.

“The program is called CATCH-IT,” Dr. Khan says. “It involves a series of self-directed, computer-based modules for both teens and their parents. The modules teach kids how to deal with a negative mood and how to deal with stressful situations at home or at school. It is designed to prevent illness, just like other vaccines.”

Previous studies have found CATCH-IT effective in preventing depressive episodes, however, the program has grown larger and more complex.

“The length and complexity have seemingly become barriers, as teens typically complete only about half of the modules,” says Dr. Cathy Joyce, the medical director for adolescent medicine at Advocate Children’s Hospital and the hospital’s principal investigator for the study. “This new clinical trial aims to help create a scaled-down version of the CATCH-IT program that is still effective at preventing teenage depression.”

Researchers also believe a simplified version of CATCH-IT would be more easily administered by primary care doctors and, hopefully, more readily adopted across the country.

The clinical trial is a collaboration with UI Health, part of the University of Illinois at Chicago, and is funded by the National Institute of Mental Health. Researchers plan to enroll approximately 400 teenage participants in the study.

To learn more about this free, voluntary research study, contact the team at 1-844-428-7878 or AHC-PATHway@aah.org.

Learn more about research at Advocate Aurora Research Institute.