Feasibility Study of a Group Intervention for Youth Wellbeing

Psychological distress, anxiety and depression are common in adolescence, and even more so following traumatic events. On Friday 15 March 2019, two mosques in Ōtautahi, Christchurch were targeted in an act of terrorism, resulting in 71 people being injured and 51 people being shot dead. This has had widespread repercussions in the Muslim and wider community in Christchurch and New Zealand. Uptake of a response pathway set up by community and district health board groups has been low despite reports of high levels of distress in the adolescent population. The proposed study offers a transdiagnostic group treatment approach (ie. Targeting a broad range of emotional difficulties) for teenagers from a community impacted by the March 15th shootings, incorporating well-evidenced transdiagnostic treatment principles into an Islamic Psychology framework to address the local population's need. We will determine the feasibility and effectiveness of this approach in increasing wellbeing in teenagers. We will run gender-specific treatment groups (8 participants in each group) recruited from the community, with one individual session (for information and consent) and 6 group sessions. We will measure symptoms of emotional difficulties, trauma symptoms and functioning at baseline, end of treatment and at 3 months follow-up. In addition, we will check in weekly with participants to monitor for any increased distress. We will also measure parental distress to explore whether an intervention for adolescents has an impact on parental wellbeing.