Recalling and Anticipating Specific Positive Events to Boost Resilience in Adolescents
Condition: Specific Positive Memories; Specific Positive Future Events; Resilience; Mental Wellbeing
Study type: Interventional

Summary: 
      Many young people are experiencing stress-related mental health problems, with some recent
      studies suggesting this number is increasing. Especially now, in the context of the COVID-19
      pandemic, there is a significant increase in depression and anxiety in adolescents. An
      important way to help address this challenge is not so much to focus on trying to repair what
      makes young people vulnerable but to focus on building resilience. Resilience refers to the
      ability to successfully deal with stressful experiences. Recent research shows that being
      able to vividly remember and imagine positive events can buffer the negative consequences of
      stress, and makes a convincing case that training adolescents in recalling and anticipating
      positive events would promote resilience and thereby improve their mental wellbeing. And this
      is exactly what the current project sets out to do for the very first time. Adolescents will
      receive a playful group-training in school to make them better at recalling and anticipating
      positive events, which is expected to help them to bounce back more swiftly from challenging
      or otherwise stressful life events. The investigators predict that youngsters who follow our
      Positive Event Training will experience more positive emotions, will show improved resilience
      and report better mental wellbeing. The investigators will also develop a free online
      training protocol for teachers so that schools can provide this resilience program on their
      own, without the need of external professional trainers.
    


Intervention name(s): Positive Events Training (PET); CREAtive writing Training (CREAT)
Intervention type(s): Behavioral; Behavioral
Intervention description(s): PET is a group-based training program combining Memory Specificity Training (MEST; Raes, 2007) and Future Event Specificity Training (FEST; Dutch version of Hallford et al. (2020): Changing the Future: An initial test of Future Specificity Training). It comprises four sessions of 50 minutes each. The training is delivered in a standardized manner, using the Positive Event Training Manual developed for this study (content adapted from our MEST and FEST manuals). Following brief psychoeducation on the rationale, participants practice generating detailed specific memories and future events using neutral and positive cue-words. Participants are maximally supported and challenged by the trainer and by the other group-members to generate very specific and highly detailed memories and future events using mental imagery and drawing upon visual, olfactory, auditory and emotional elements of the events, including both contextual and sensory-perceptual details.; CREAT follows the exact same format and length as the PET training (i.e., delivered by a trainer in group over 4 x 50-minute sessions, including homework exercises). Following brief psychoeducation on the (bogus*) rationale behind PET, participants complete a series of creative writing exercises using funny and thought-provoking writing prompts. Just as in PET, participants are maximally supported and challenged by the trainer and by the other group-members, in this case to generate completions that are as creative and funny as possible. The investigators used CREAT successfully before in an online format as a bogus control training for a memory specificity training. (*) The investigators tell participants that these creative writing exercises have been found to be beneficial for mental wellbeing, as creative writing exercises cultivate creativity and stimulate participants' imagination skills.
Allocation: Randomized
Intervention model: Parallel Assignment
Intervention model description: A cluster randomized-controlled trial design will be used with a two (condition: PET vs. active control) x three (time-point: baseline, post-training and FU) factorial-design.
Masking: None (Open Label)
Primary purpose: Prevention
Keywords: adolescents; anhedonia; dampening; episodic future thinking; memory specificity; positive emotions; resilience; savoring; wellbeing