3 - (SYM 43) Project Soaring: The Impact of School-based DBT Skills on Depression and Anxiety

Background: Depression and anxiety disorders present significant challenges to adolescents’ wellbeing, with those from disadvantaged backgrounds more at risk due to accumulative chronic stressors. School-based programs targeting emotion regulation may provide an effective prevention strategy for emerging depression and anxiety symptoms in these youth. Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) is an evidence-based treatment that emphasizes acceptance and change strategies to facilitate development of four core skills: mindfulness, emotion regulation, interpersonal effectiveness, and distress tolerance.

Method: The purpose of this study is to assess the effectiveness of a school-based, DBT skills intervention in a diverse sample of 76 at-risk adolescents (59.2% female, 82.9% Hispanic/Latino) aged 15-18 attending a continuation high school. Participants were a selective prevention sample in that they were first pre-screened as at-risk for emotion dysregulation difficulties. Paired t-tests were conducted in order to compare possible pre- and post-intervention differences in DBT skills and internalizing symptoms. Two simultaneous multiple linear regressions were used to examine whether DBT skill change scores predicted depression and anxiety change scores, respectively.

Results: Results from paired t-tests indicate a positive trend in improved DBT skills and internalizing outcomes following the intervention (ps < .05), including significant improvements in mindfulness scores, t(75) = -3.66, d = -0.42, p < .001 and marginal improvements in depression scores, t(75) = 2.59, d = 0.30, p = .01. Overall regression models accounted for a significant proportion of the variance in internalizing symptoms, and individual predictor results indicated that changes in some DBT skills predicted changes in symptoms (ps < .05).

 


Conclusion: These findings expand the current DBT literature base to include more support for school-based DBT interventions, in addition to providing the first-ever protocol to target a selective population of adolescents. Further research should adopt similar community-engaged approaches when designing and implementing interventions with understudied youth samples.