Predictoren voor de effectiviteit van Cognitieve Gedragstherapie in de preventie van depressie bij adolescenten

To understand how Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) can contribute to depression prevention in adolescents and what factors should be taken into account in practice, it is important to distinguish factors that predict the effectiveness of CBT for depression prevention in adolescents. Current research has therefore examined whether age group, gender, school level and ethnicity are predictors for the effectiveness of a whole CBT-prevention program (consisting of 12 sessions), and for the effectiveness of cognitive and behavioral modules separately (all 3 sessions). Depressive symptoms were measured with the Children’s Depression Inventory (CDI-2). The data included data from N = 145 participants and a multiple regression analysis was performed. Results showed that age group, gender, and school level were not significant predictors of the effectiveness of CBT. Ethnicity was found to be a predictor, with depressive symptoms decreasing more in Dutch ethnicity than in non-Dutch ethnicity. With respect to the cognitive modules, no significant differences were found for change in depressive symptoms according to age, gender, and ethnicity. However, school level did provide a significant result, with the effectiveness of the cognitive modules of CBT found to be highest for adolescents with low school levels. For the behavioral modules, none of the variables significantly predicted the effect. The findings provide recommendations for professionals using CBT in the context of depression prevention among adolescents. More research is needed to confirm current results and gain further insight into for whom CBT works.