Adolescent and parent experiences with a primary care/Internet-based depression prevention intervention (CATCH-IT)

Abstract

This article describes a mixed-methods approach to understand the experience of adolescents involved in the Internet-based intervention for depression, Competent Adulthood Transition with Cognitive Behavioral Humanistic and Interpersonal Training (CATCH-IT), as well as the experiences of their parents while they were involved. Qualitative analysis was done with grounded theory-based categorization of interview comments and typed program responses (adolescents only) into themes. Quantitative analysis was done with self-report surveys. The article describes the nine themes reflecting the adolescent experience and the three themes reflecting the parent experience. The article also describes the results of the quantitative surveys of helpfulness and attitudes change, which were favorable of the Internet-based intervention. Separate models explaining the psychological transformation of the adolescents and the experience of the parents are proposed. The positive experience of the adolescents and parents involved in CATCH-IT is discussed in the context of growing interest in how best to utilize Internet-based interventions for mental illness, and suggestions are made for future investigation.

Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT00145912 NCT00152529.

Fig. 1.

The psycho-emotional state of the adolescents before, during and after the CATCH-IT intervention. Stressful cognitions or life events penetrate and consume the adolescents (red). During the intervention, they develop defenses and actively struggle (green) with the deep-seated negative emotionality. Following the intervention, adolescents experience a decrease in active defense but reestablish their baseline enough to reduce the effects and/or occurrences of psychologically adverse events.

Fig. 2.

The parental desire to help their adolescents juxtaposed with their ability to do so as influenced by the intervention. Understanding of depression improved, but parental ability to directly participate was a deficiency.