Assessing the effectiveness of a school-based depression and suicide prevention program

Résumé

The purpose of the present study is to evaluate the effectiveness of the Understanding Teen Depression program with regard to changing adolescents' self reported attitudes on topics including stigma, suicide and depression. The design is a within-subjects repeated measure survey. Archival survey data from the Erika's Lighthouse Understanding Teen Depression program were statistically analyzed with an alpha level of .05 to determine whether participation in the program was linked to changes in adolescents' self-reported attitudes and whether gender differences in attitudes toward depression, stigma, and suicide exist. Results included pretest and posttest surveys from 331 northern Chicagoland high school students. Participation in the Understanding Teen Depression program was linked to higher rates of adaptive and healthy attitude ratings overall, with eight of the fourteen survey items reaching significance for change across testing. Gender differences were seen in five pretest items and four posttest items. There were no differences in knowledge acquisition for male or female participants; however there were significant differences in baseline attitude ratings between genders. The current study concludes the Understanding Teen Depression program was instrumental in helping adolescents increase their rates of healthy and adaptive attitude responses to concepts of stigma, depression and suicide. Future research should include creating multiple forms of the survey and compare the survey items to validated measures of stigma, depression and suicide. Adding additional items pulling for students' openness in responding and potential for social desirability biases may also help in the development of a more accurate survey tool. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved) ÉTATS-UNIS ADOLESCENT MILIEU-SCOLAIRE ÉTUDIANT-SECONDAIRE PRÉVENTION PROGRAMME DÉPRESSION ÉVALUATION