A 30-minute lesson in the malleability of personality has long-term benefits for anxious, depressed teenagers

By Christian Jarrett There are many effective psychological therapies to help teenagers with depression, anxiety or other mental health problems. Unfortunately, for various reasons, most teenagers never get access to a professional therapist. To overcome this problem, some researchers are exploring the potential of brief, “single-session” interventions that can be delivered cheaply and easily to many at-risk teenagers outside of a clinical context. In The Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, Jessica Schleider and John Weisz at Harvard University present extremely promising results from their trial of a 30-minute computer session teaching depressed and anxious teenagers that personality is malleable. To be eligible, the participating teenagers needed to have problematic anxiety and/or depression. Ninety-six teenagers took part, aged 12 to 15, mostly White American. Forty-eight of them were assigned to the 20-to-30-minute session about the malleability of personality. The others, who had the same baseline symptom levels, acted as controls and spent an equal amount of time in a computer-based session of “supportive therapy” learning about emotions and how it’s helpful to talk about them. The idea was this would match the experience of being enrolled in the personality change session in all ways except for the all-important content. The personality session was self-administered on computer and taught the teenagers about neuroplasticity and th...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Developmental Mental health Personality Source Type: blogs