Randomized Trial of a Single-Session Growth Mind-Set Intervention for Rural Adolescents’ Internalizing and Externalizing Problems

Abstract

Adolescents living in rural regions of the United States face substantial barriers to accessing mental health services, creating needs for more accessible, nonstigmatizing, briefer interventions. Research suggests that single-session “growth mind-set” interventions (GM-SSIs)—which teach the belief that personal traits are malleable through effort—may reduce internalizing and externalizing problems in adolescents. However, GM-SSIs have not been evaluated among rural youth, and their effects on internalizing and externalizing problems have not been assessed within a single trial, rendering their relative benefits for different problem types unclear. We examined whether a computerized GM-SSI could reduce depressive symptoms, social anxiety symptoms, and conduct problems in female adolescents from rural areas of the United States. Tenth-grade female adolescents (N = 222, M age = 15.2, 38% White, 25% Black, 29% Hispanic) from 4 rural, low-income high schools in the southeastern United States were randomized to receive a 45-min GM-SSI or a computer-based active control program, teaching healthy sexual behaviors. Young women self-reported depression symptoms, social anxiety symptoms, and conduct problem behaviors at baseline and 4-month follow-up. Relative to the female students in the control group, the students receiving the GM-SSI reported modest but significantly greater reductions in depressive symptoms (d= .23) and likelihood of reporting elevated depressive symptoms (d= .29) from baseline to follow-up. GM-SSI effects were nonsignificant for social anxiety symptoms, although a small effect size emerged in the hypothesized direction (d= .21), and nonsignificant for change in conduct problems (d= .01). A free-of-charge 45-min GM-SSI may help reduce internalizing distress, especially depression—but not conduct problems—in rural female adolescents.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development at the National Institutes of Health (R00 HD075654, K24 HD069204), the North Carolina State College of Humanities and Social Sciences Research Office, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Center for AIDS Research (P30 AI50410), and the University of North Carolina Communication for Health Applications and Interventions Core, a National Institutes of Health–funded facility (P30 DK56350, P30 CA16086).