Reducing risk for anxiety and depression in adolescents: Effects of a single-session intervention teaching that personality can change

Abstract

Efforts to reduce youth mental health problems have advanced greatly but have not lowered overall rates of youth mental illness. Thus, a need exists for disseminable, mechanism-targeted approaches to reducing risk of youth psychopathology. Accordingly, we conducted a randomized-controlled trial testing whether a single-session intervention teaching growth personality mindsets (the belief that personality is malleable) reduced known risk factors for anxiety and depression in adolescents experiencing or at risk for internalizing problems (N=96, ages 12-15). Compared to a supportive-therapy control, a 30-minute computer-guided mindset intervention strengthened adolescents’ perceived control; this improvement was associated with increases in growth mindsets. Further, electrodermal activity recovery slopes showed that youths receiving the mindset intervention recovered from a lab-based social stressor over three times as fast as control group youths. Improvements in growth mindsets and perceived control were linked with faster stress recovery. Results suggest a disseminable strategy for reducing internalizing problem risk among adolescents.

An Entity Theory of Intelligence Predicts Higher Cortisol Levels When High School Grades Are Declining

“…In one study (Yeager, Lee, et al, 2016, Study 1), implicit theories of personality-theories about whether social and moral characteristics are fixed and cannot be developed-were related to high school students' threat appraisals (i.e., ratio of perceived demand to perceived resources) and HPA-axis activation (i.e., cortisol levels) following a controlled social stressor (the Trier Social Stress Test; Kirschbaum, Pirke, & Hellhammer, 1993). These findings were replicated in a sample of adolescents with elevated internalizing symptoms (Schleider & Weisz, 2016), and in a daily diary and cortisol sampling study (Yeager, Lee, et al, 2016, Study 2). However, to date, no empirical research has examined associations between implicit theories of intelligence, naturalistic academic stressors in high school, and HPA-axis activation.…”

Dealing With Social Difficulty During Adolescence: The Role of Implicit Theories of Personality

“…In another study, entering ninth‐graders who took part in the incremental theory intervention showed 40% fewer depressive symptoms 8–9 months after the intervention, and the effect was more prominent for those who started the year ascribing to an entity theory of personality . In a replication study, this effect on internalizing symptoms did not generalize to a group of entering college students a month later , but in a different replication study, the effect on physiological reactivity that precedes internalizing symptoms generalized to clinically referred adolescents . These initial results are encouraging enough to continue replications, but the intervention is not ready to be implemented at full scale.…”

“…Physiologically, threat ‐type appraisals lead to cardiovascular and hormonal responses that prepare the body for damage and defeat: constricted blood vessels and secretion of cortisol (activation of the HPA axis; ). Ascribing to an incremental theory, which promotes more challenge‐type appraisals, reduces adolescents’ threat‐type physiological responses when they are evaluated negatively by a peer (; see also for a replication).…”

Future Directions in Single-Session Youth Mental Health Interventions

“…In two trials of growth mindset SSIs, significant effects on proposed intervention mechanisms were observed. In one trial, adolescents receiving a growth mindset SSI (versus a control SSI) reported greater increases in growth mindset, primary perceived control, and perceived secondary perceived control immediately post-intervention (Schleider & Weisz, 2016). Effects on primary perceived control, but not secondary control, persisted at a 9-month follow-up (Schleider & Weisz, 2018).…”

“…following SSIs, where symptom changes emerge months after an SSI but changes in other outcomes are detectable immediately (Schleider & Weisz, 2016;Schleider & Weisz, 2018). Some have suggested that brief interventions may exert 'delayed' impacts on outcomes of interest by triggering recursive learning processes.…”