The Case for Prevention Research in Adolescent-Onset Mental Illness—Game On!

Abstract

Lindenberg et al 1 conducted a novel 2-group, 33-site cluster randomized clinical trial to compare a school-based, cognitive behavioral therapy-based indicated preventive group intervention (PROTECT) vs assessment-only that is intended to prevent gaming disorder or unspecified internet use disorder among at-risk adolescents (n = 422). Lindenberg et al 1 designed their study according to American Psychological Association recommendations for efficient psychological prevention 2 and established dual foci: symptom reduction and prevention of illness onset. The trial showed greater symptom severity reduction in the PROTECT intervention group than in the assessment-only control group at 12 months, with a medium to large effect size in addition to greater reduction in reported procrastination. Given the age of the target group (mean [SD] age, 15.11 [2.01] years), intervention acceptability was high, with 90.7% of participants reporting satisfaction and 85.5% of participants Open Access. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the CC-BY License.