JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Youth and young adults face barriers to mental healthcare, including a shortage of programs that accept youth and a lack of developmentally sensitive programming among those that do. This shortage, along with the associated geographically limited options, have contributed to the health disparities experienced by youth in general and by those with higher acuity mental health needs in particular. Although Intensive Outpatient Programs (IOP) can be an effective option for youth with more complex mental health needs, place-based IOP locations are still limited to clients who have the ability to travel to the clinical setting several days per week.

Objective:

The objective of the analysis reported here was to assess changes in depression between intake and discharge among youth and young adults diagnosed with depression attending remote IOP treatment. Analysis of outcomes and the application of findings to programmatic decisions are regular parts of ongoing quality improvement (QI) efforts of the program whose results are reported here.

Methods:

Outcomes data are collected for all clients at intake and discharge. The Public Health Questionnaire adapted for adolescents (PHQ-A) is used to measure depression, with changes between intake and discharge regularly assessed for QI purposes using repeated measures t-tests. Changes in clinical symptoms are assessed using McNamar’s chi-square analyses. One-way Analysis of Variance are used to test for differences among age, gender, and sexual orientation groups. For the current analyses, N=1062 cases were selected using criteria that included a diagnosis of depression and a minimum of 18 hours of treatment over a minimum of two weeks of care.

Results:

Clients ranged in age from 11 to 25, with an average of 16 years. Almost a quarter (23%) identified as non-gender binary and 60% identified as members of an LGBTQ+ community. Significant decreases (Mdiff = -6.06) were seen in depression between intake and discharge (t967= -24.68, P<.001), with the symptoms of a significant number of clients (P<.001) crossing below the clinical cutoff for major depressive disorder between intake and discharge (n=388, 53%). No significant differences were found across subgroups defined by age [F(2, 958) = .47, P = .63], gender identity [F(7, 886) = 1.20, P = .30], or sexual orientation [F(7, 872 = .47, P = .86].

Conclusions:

Findings support the use of remote IOP to treat depression among youth and young adults suggesting that it may be a modality that is an effective alternative to place-based mental health treatment. Additionally, findings suggest that the remote IOP model may be an effective treatment approach for youth from marginalized groups defined by gender and sexual orientation. This is important given that youth from these groups tend to have poorer outcomes and greater barriers to treatment compared to cis-gender, heterosexual youth. Clinical Trial: N/A