Boost Camp’, a universal school-based transdiagnostic prevention program targeting adolescent emotion regulation; evaluating the effectiveness by a clustered RCT : a protocol paper

Abstract Background The transition from childhood into adolescence can be considered as a critical developmental period. Moreover, adolescence is associated with a decreased use of adaptive emotion regulation strategies and an increased use of maladaptive emotion regulation strategies increasing the risk of emotional problems. Targeting emotion regulation is therefore seen as an innovative prevention approach. The present study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of Boost camp, an innovative school-based prevention program targeting ER, on adolescents’ emotion regulation skills and emotional wellbeing. Also secondary outcomes and possible moderators will be included. Methods The aim is to reach 300 adolescents (16 class groups, 6 schools) in their first year of high school. A clustered Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) with two conditions, intervention (n = 150) and control (n = 150), will be set up. Adolescents in the intervention condition will receive 14 lessons over the course of 2 days, followed by Booster sessions, and will be compared with adolescents in a non-intervention control group. The outcomes will be measured by self-report questionnaires at baseline, immediately after Boost camp, and at three and 6 months follow-up. Discussion Data-collection is planned to be completed in May 2018. Data-analyses will be finished the end of 2018. The presented paper describes the Boost camp program and the clustered RCT design to evaluate its effectiveness. It is expected that Boost camp will have beneficial effects. If found effective, Boost camp will have the potential to increase adolescent’s ER and well-being, and reduce the risk to become adults in need. The trials is registered on the 13th of June 2017 in ISRCTN registry [ISRCTN68235634]

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Training adaptive emotion regulation skills in early adolescents: The effects of distraction, acceptance, cognitive reappraisal, and problem solving

Contains fulltext : 222467.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Closed access)Adolescence is a critical developmental period in which intense experienced negative emotions need to be successfully regulated in order to decrease the risk of developing psychopathology. This study investigated the immediate and prolonged effects of training emotion regulation (ER) in 256 young adolescents (9-13 years). The four experimental conditions in which an ER skill (acceptance, distraction, cognitive reappraisal, and problem solving) was trained were compared with two control conditions (rumination, performing a cognitive task). Results revealed that: (1) happy affect significantly increased and sad and anxious affect significantly decreased in the four experimental ER conditions but also in the cognitive task condition. Rumination did not have beneficial ER effects. (2) In the experimental condition, the effects on sad and happy affect were more prominent after using distraction, problem solving, and cognitive reappraisal compared to using acceptance. (3) There were no long-term effects of the ER training (ERT) at 1-month follow-up. These results demonstrate that young adolescents are able to use distraction, acceptance, cognitive reappraisal and problem solving, but that the effects of those strategies do not outperform the effects of a neutral cognitive task. In addition, our findings confirm that rumination leads to the maintenance and increase of negative affect, at least short-term. Further research should explore the effects of a more extensive ERT on intense affect states in young adolescents and should investigate the supplementary effects of such a program compared to a neutral cognitive distraction task.19 p