Psychological and/or educational interventions for the prevention of depression in children and adolescents

Prevention of depression in youth: A qualitative review and future suggestions

“…Most reviews of youth interventions have focused on depressive symptoms as the outcome variable because of the relative dearth of studies examining diagnostic outcomes (cf. Merry, McDowell, Hetrick, Bir, & Muller, 2004). Generally, intervention effects have been small to moderate in size during the intervention with somewhat larger effects demonstrated in targeted than universal interventions; effects across follow-up have varied across different meta-analyses.…”

“…Jane-Llopis et al (2003) reported on 25 trials of youth interventions and found a mean effect size of .21 for children and .19 for adolescents on post-intervention depressive symptoms. Merry, McDowell, Hetrick, et al (2004) examined 21 randomized controlled studies, although only 13 reported data that could be used for pooling in their meta-analysis. For symptom-level outcomes at post-intervention, they reported standardized mean differences between intervention and no intervention groups of −.26 and −.21 for targeted (selected and/ or indicated) and universal interventions, respectively.…”

“…These findings suggest that universal interventions yield inferior results in the short and long-term as compared to targeted interventions. Merry, McDowell, Hetrick et al (2004) reviewed 5 studies that reported on diagnoses of depression, and found a significant standardized mean difference of −.10 at post-intervention. Both universal and targeted interventions were associated with lower incidence of depression.…”

“…As astutely noted by Greenberg, Domitrovich, and Bumbarger (2001), short-term interventions may yield short-term effects, whereas ongoing/multi-year programs are more likely to have longer-term effects. Several authors have called for the inclusion of booster sessions in interventions, yet they have been implemented infrequently (e.g., Chaplin et al, 2006;Gillham et al, 2006;Merry, McDowell, Hetrick et al 2004). …”

“…To date, moderation analyses of gender have yielded conflicting results (Gillham et al 2001;Horowitz & Garber, 2006;Merry, McDowell, Hetrick, et al, 2004). An earlier review by Gillham et al (2001) summarized findings across several studies in which various permutations of outcomes have occurred: significant effects for boys only; increased symptoms in boys and decreased symptoms in girls; and nonsignificant gender differences.…”