Behavioral Activation With Depressed Adolescents
Public ClinicalTrials.gov record NCT01137149. Field values are reproduced from the official study page; the official ClinicalTrials.gov record remains the source of truth for eligibility, enrollment, and contact information.
Data is sourced from official ClinicalTrials.gov public API records. Always review the official ClinicalTrials.gov record for the latest information.
Official title
Behavioral Activation Therapy With Adolescents
Brief summary
Reproduced verbatim from the official ClinicalTrials.gov record. Not medical advice.
Twenty percent of adolescents will have at least one episode of clinical depression by age 18, and 65% will experience transient or less severe depressive symptoms. Depression compromises the process of adolescent development by interfering with academic, occupational, and social functioning, and increasing risk for substance use and suicide. Although initial research provides some support for both pharmacological and psychosocial interventions, many depressed teens do not respond to these interventions, and others experience a relapse of symptoms within one year. Furthermore, concerns about antidepressant medications increasing suicide risk have raised additional caution about use of pharmacotherapy with adolescents. As such, the importance of developing innovative treatment options for depressed adolescents is critical. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) has been demonstrated to be effective in the treatment of depressed adults, with more modest efficacy data when used with children and adolescents. Interestingly, recent data from the adult literature suggests the positive outcomes of CBT can be achieved and surpassed by interventions that are purely behavioral in nature. Behavioral interventions may be easier to implement with many adolescents and may provide a better developmental fit for depressed adolescents. The present project proposes to develop a manualized Behavioral Activation (BA) Therapy for depressed adolescents, test its adaptability, acceptability, and feasibility in an open clinical trial with 12 adolescents (aged 12-17), and following further treatment refinement, test its efficacy in a randomized controlled trial of 50 adolescents (aged 12-17), in which 25 will be randomized to BA Therapy and 25 will receive "Treatment as Usual (TAU)." In this randomized controlled trial, depressed adolescents will receive 12-weeks of BA Therapy or TAU. Psychiatric and psychosocial functioning will be assessed at the beginning, middle, and end of treatment. A naturalistic follow-up will be conducted 4 and 9 months post-treatment. Assuming that BA will outperform "usual" approaches to therapy with depressed youth, the data will provide the basis for the development of a larger randomized controlled trial comparing the efficacy of BA against other widely studied approaches to the treatment of depression in youth, namely pharmacotherapy in the form of Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs), and CBT.
Study identification
- NCT ID
- NCT01137149
- Recruitment status
- Not listed
- Study type
- Interventional
- Phase
- Phase 1, Phase 2
- Enrollment
- 60 participants
Conditions and interventions
Conditions
Interventions
- Behavioral Activation Therapy Behavioral
- Treatment as Usual- Psychotherapy Behavioral
Behavioral
Eligibility (public fields only)
- Age range
- 11 Years to 18 Years
- Sex
- All
- Healthy volunteers
- Healthy volunteers not accepted
This page does not interpret eligibility. Detailed inclusion and exclusion criteria are on the official ClinicalTrials.gov record.
Study timeline
- Start date
- Sep 30, 2006
- Primary completion
- Dec 31, 2010
- Completion
- Dec 31, 2010
- Last update posted
- Jun 3, 2010
2006 – 2011
United States locations
- U.S. sites
- 1
- U.S. states
- 1
- U.S. cities
- 1
| Facility | City | State | ZIP | Site status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Seattle Children's Hospital | Seattle | Washington | 98105 | — |
Site contact phone numbers, emails, and investigator names are intentionally not displayed here. Open the official ClinicalTrials.gov record for site contact information.
About this trial record page
- What this page shows
- Public field values for ClinicalTrials.gov record NCT01137149, including study identification, conditions, interventions, eligibility (age, sex, healthy volunteer), timeline, and U.S. site list.
- What this page does not do
- No medical advice, eligibility judgments, treatment recommendations, study quality scoring, or AI-generated medical summaries. No site contact phone numbers, emails, or investigator names.
- Where the data comes from
- Sourced from the official ClinicalTrials.gov public API. The official record is the source of truth.
- Last refresh
- Last update posted Jun 3, 2010 · Synced Sep 3, 2026
Related: full search, browse by condition, browse by drug or therapy, browse by sponsor, browse by U.S. city.
Open the official record
The complete protocol, eligibility criteria, and contact information for NCT01137149 live on ClinicalTrials.gov.