NURTURE is a single session intervention designed to help improve youth attachment with their parents, friends, and significant others. The intervention focuses on teaching youth about three foundations of relationships (i.e., trust, communication, and connection) and provides tools and techniques to improve each aspect to promote health relationships. I have recently received the Visionary Grant from the American Psychological Foundation (under the title "Promoting Healthy Relationships in Rural Adolescents Experiencing Depression: Co-Designing and Evaluating an Online Single-Session Intervention" to create and test NURTURE as an intervention for teens living in rural areas of the United States. Rural adolescents experience significant barriers to accessing treatment for depression. These barriers to accessing mental health care exacerbate mental health problems as the onset of depression in adolescence accounts for 66% of lifetime depression cases. The goal of this study is to pioneer the development of a digital single-session intervention (i.e., N.U.R.T.U.R.E.) that focuses on teaching at-risk rural youth interpersonal skills, a key factor for building psychological and social resilience. We will employ a human-centered design approach to iteratively co-design and tailor a single-session relationship skills intervention that is feasible, acceptable, and engaging for at-risk rural youth with elevated depressive symptoms. We will assess whether a relationship competence SSI improves proximal outcomes (immediately pre- to post-intervention) in relationship and communication knowledge, perceived change, and relationship skills learning and improves distal depression symptoms at a 3-month follow-up.
Currently being evaluated in a randomized control trial.
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