Clinical trial NCT05757180: Recalling and Anticipating Specific Positive Events to Boost Resilience in Adolescents
Official title: Recalling and Anticipating Specific Positive Events to Boost Resilience in Adolescents
Study type: INTERVENTIONAL
Overall status: COMPLETED
Phase: NA
Conditions: Specific Positive Memories
Specific Positive Future Events
Resilience
Mental Wellbeing
Keywords: adolescents
anhedonia
dampening
episodic future thinking
memory specificity
positive emotions
resilience
savoring
wellbeing
Lead sponsor: KU Leuven
Sponsor class: OTHER
Collaborators: name: Research Foundation Flanders
First posted: 2023-03-07
Enrollment: 191
Sex: ALL
Minimum age (years): 12
Maximum age (years): 16
Standard ages: CHILD
Accepts healthy volunteers: no
Allocation: RANDOMIZED
Intervention model: PARALLEL
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.
Primary purpose: PREVENTION

Brief 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.


Eligibility criteria: Inclusion Criteria:

* All adolescents of the selected classes of the participating schools (12-16 years; 1st and 2nd grade of secondary school) who want to take part in the study and give informed consent (own informed consent and active parental informed consent) will be allowed to take part in the study.
* To minimize the risk of too much heterogeneity in our final sample, for instance due to context factors related to the type of education, the investigators will first recruit classes of adolescents that follow general secondary education. Future studies (after PET has been properly evaluated in this study) should also be conducted in samples of adolescents following other types of secondary education.

Exclusion Criteria:

-

Primary outcomes:
measure: Change in Resilience
timeFrame: 1 week before the intervention, 1 week after the intervention and 2 months after the intervention.
measure: Change in Mental wellbeing
timeFrame: One week before the intervention, one week after the intervention and two months after the intervention; The SWEMWBS consists of seven statements (e.g., "I felt relaxed.") about thoughts and feelings that are scored on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from
Secondary outcomes:
measure: Change in Positive affect
timeFrame: One week before the intervention, one week after the intervention and two months after the intervention
measure: Change in Positive affect regulation
timeFrame: One week before the intervention, one week after the intervention and two months after the intervention
measure: Change in Anhedonia
timeFrame: One week before the intervention, one week after the intervention and two months after the intervention
measure: Change in Dampening
timeFrame: One week before the intervention, one week after the intervention and two months after the intervention
measure: Change in Savoring
timeFrame: One week before the intervention, one week after the intervention and two months after the intervention
measure: Change in Depressive symptoms and stress
timeFrame: One week before the intervention, one week after the intervention and two months after the intervention
Other outcomes:
measure: Change in episodic future thinking specificity (manipulation check)
timeFrame: One week before the intervention, one week after the intervention and two months after the intervention
measure: Change in positive memory specificity (manipulation check)
timeFrame: One week before the intervention, one week after the intervention and two months after the intervention
measure: Change in Pleasure
timeFrame: One week before the intervention, one week after the intervention and two months after the intervention
measure: Change in Detail and mental imagery
timeFrame: One week before the intervention, one week after the intervention and two months after the intervention
measure: Change in Perceived control and likelihood
timeFrame: One week before the intervention, one week after the intervention and two months after the intervention
measure: Change in Positive feelings
timeFrame: One week before the intervention, one week after the intervention and two months after the intervention
Locations:
city: Bilzen
country: Belgium
facility: Sint Lambertuscollege
state: Limburg
city: Hasselt
country: Belgium
facility: GO! Next sportschool Hasselt
state: Limburg
city: Hasselt
country: Belgium
facility: Scholen Kindsheid Jesu
state: Limburg
city: Kapelle-op-den-Bos
country: Belgium
facility: KOBOS Secundaire Scholen
state: Vlaams-Brabant
city: Antwerpen
country: Belgium
facility: Pius X - instituut
Study officials:
affiliation: KU Leuven
name: Filip Raes, Prof. dr.
role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR
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