prevention programme for improvement of well-being and level of participation in adolescents with enhanced psychiatric burden in the school environment.

Conditions: Blended-care Counselling; Digital and Mental Literacy Training; App STEPS

Summary: the objectives of this two-arm phase-iia randomized, controlled study are: * to prove whether the combination of a clinic-guided personal counseling with a therapy-assistive digital support (blinded care approach) and a training of digital and mental health literacy is superior to a teacher-guided training of digital and mental health literacy only (treatment as usual) concerning the reduction of psychiatric burden in adolescents. * to improve the well-being and level of participation in adolescents at risk for psychiatric disorders. * to reduce the expression of psychiatric symptoms in adolescents with enhanced psychiatric burden. * to test whether the combination of a clinic-guided personal counseling with a therapy-assistive digital support is well accepted by students, their parents, and teachers. * to identify individual factors predicting the improvement of well-being and level of participation in adolescents as well as the acceptance of the prevention program in all subjects involved (students, parents, teachers, psychologists). * to investigate whether the clinic-guided personal counseling with a therapy-assistive digital support causes reduction of primary and secondary costs in the psychosocial support system and represents an economic advantage.

the objectives of this two-arm phase-iia randomized, controlled study are: * to prove whether the combination of a clinic-guided personal counseling with a therapy-assistive digital support (blinded care approach) and a training of digital and mental health literacy is superior to a teacher-guided training of digital and mental health literacy only (treatment as usual) concerning the reduction of psychiatric burden in adolescents. * to improve the well-being and level of participation in adolescents at risk for psychiatric disorders. * to reduce the expression of psychiatric symptoms in adolescents with enhanced psychiatric burden. * to test whether the combination of a clinic-guided personal counseling with a therapy-assistive digital support is well accepted by students, their parents, and teachers. * to identify individual factors predicting the improvement of well-being and level of participation in adolescents as well as the acceptance of the prevention program in all subjects involved (students, parents, teachers, psychologists). * to investigate whether the clinic-guided personal counseling with a therapy-assistive digital support causes reduction of primary and secondary costs in the psychosocial support system and represents an economic advantage. the steps@school clinical study is a two-arm parallel group phase-iia randomized, non-blinded, controlled study with four measurement points (t1: confirming the risk status/checking inclusion criteria/informed consent; t2: baseline assessment and randomization prior to start of intervention; t3: post intervention assessment; t4: three months follow-up). the study will prove whether the combination of a clinic-guided personal counseling with a therapy-assistive digital support (first arm) is superior to a teacher-guided digital preventive platform with stand-alone digital applications (second arm, described as treatment as usual) concerning the reduction of psychiatric burden in adolescents. to prove this objective, a comparison between two groups (treatment of approval vs. treatment as usual) is necessary. the intervention is a implementation of a weekly psychological counseling for psychiatric problems via videoconference combined with an additionally digital support using a well-established mobile treatment system steps®. the intervention will include: 1) digital and mental literacy training for children, parents and teachers in the school; 2) weekly counselling over 6 weeks via videoconference for adolescents and their parents; 3) blinded-care use of the mobile treatment system steps®. control condition (treatment as usual) includes the implementation of the digital and mental literacy training, however, no weekly counselling by the team of the clinic and no blinded-care use of the mobile treatment system steps®.

Eligibility criteria:
inclusion criteria: * children and adolescents of both genders (w : m = 1 : 1) aged from 10 to 14 years * psychiatric symptoms characterized using sdq-25 with the cutoff \> 17 * regular school attendence exclusion criteria: * iq \<80, ongoing psychiatric or psychotherapeutic treatment with regular appointments (at least once a month).

Keywords: emental health digital health blended care treatment students at risk in schools psychiatric disorders adolescents