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Building Depression Resilience in Adolescents: A 2-year Evaluation of the Resourceful Adolescent Program (RAP) in a South West Sydney High School

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2016

Pandora Petrovski ,
Stephen Matthey  and
Leanne Clarke
Pandora Petrovski*
Affiliation:
South Western Sydney Area Health Service, Australia
Stephen Matthey
Affiliation:
South Western Sydney Area Health Service, Australia
Leanne Clarke
Affiliation:
South Western Sydney Area Health Service, Australia
*
Infant, Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service, South West Sydney Area Health Service, 2nd Floor, 157–161 George Street, Liverpool, NSW 2170, Australia. Email:[email protected]
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Abstract

The Resourceful Adolescent Program (RAP), an 11-session depression prevention program, was provided to Year 9 students at a South West Sydney High School. Students were assessed using the Children's Depression Inventory and the Adolescent Coping Scale. These assessments were conducted prior to the start of the program, the end of the program, at 6 months, at 1 year and again at 2 years. Further, at the 2-year time point, students were asked to complete a questionnaire — Use and Usefulness of RAP Skills Evaluation Form (2 years on) — to help ascertain the “practical effectiveness” of RAP. The results provide some support for the efficacy of RAP as a depression prevention program with high-school students of approximately 15 years of age. A significant main effect was found for time on the CDI, with follow-up comparisons showing that pretreatment scores were significantly higher than scores at any of the other subsequent time points. There were no main effects or interactions for ethnicity or sex. For the measures of coping, no change was evidenced. This was a surprising result as one of the main objectives of RAP was to increase positive coping skills. The Use and Usefulness of Rap Skills Evaluation Form (2 years on) showed that most of the students found the program to be of some use; however, less than half stated they had utilised some of the skills taught in the program. More importantly, of the students who stated they had experienced difficult situations over the last 12 months, 23 (66%) said that they had used skills taught in RAP to help them; however, there was limited support regarding the helpfulness of these skills during the difficult situations. In spite of a number of methodological issues limiting the interpretations of the findings, the current long-term evaluation provides an important contribution to the small body of literature available on the effectiveness of RAP.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Psychologists and Counsellors in Schools , Volume 13 , Issue 1: Mental Health Issues and Schools , July 2003 , pp. 63 - 76
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2003

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