AADAPT_V1.0
Research type
Research Study
Full title
AADAPT Online – Addressing young mums’ and dads’ low mood and their parenting An online behavioural activation and parenting self-help package supported by peer mentors (AADAPT Online) for 16-24-year-old parents experiencing depression: a pilot randomised control trial.
IRAS ID
347818
Contact name
Louise Dalton
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Oxford / Research Governance, Ethics and Assurance
ISRCTN Number
ISRCTN14608187
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 7 months, 24 days
Research summary
Depression is a common mental health difficulty that often starts in adolescence. Becoming a parent during adolescence can bring extra challenges. Depression directly affects the young parents themselves but it can also impact on parenting and how they interact with their children.
A therapy called Behavioural Activation (BA) has been shown to help people with depression and is widely used as a treatment in the NHS. However, young parents often experience barriers to accessing treatments; this includes stigma and the challenge of managing babies’ schedules with attending appointments. There is great potential for digital interventions to address these issues in accessing psychological treatment and increase treatment efficacy.
Working collaboratively, we explored what young parents thought was important to include in an online support package to treat low mood in 16-24 year old parents and their ideas about being supported by peers with lived-experience of being a young parent; 'peer mentors’ have previously been successfully used with this age group.
We will now test whether an Online BA package of information and activities, supported by trained volunteer parents who were previously young parents themselves (peer mentors AKA Parent Buddies) is acceptable and helpful for young parents. We will also measure how much parents interact with the Online BA package. Parents will be allocated to either AADAPT Online or AADAPT Self-Guided and this will be decided at random by a computer.
AADAPT Online: Parents will be given access to six online BA sessions accompanied by an initial introductory call and then six weekly conversations with a Parent Buddy.
AADAPT Self-Guided (control arm): Parents will be given the BA sessions via email and/or in the post, 12 weeks after being allocated to this group. They can work through these at their own pace. They will not be supported by a Parent Buddy volunteer.REC name
Wales REC 3
REC reference
24/WA/0366
Date of REC Opinion
17 Dec 2024
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion