Overview Of Three Types Of Group Interventions For Depression
Major depressive disorder affects many different types of people. Depression disorder is a severe mental disorder that can affect any age, gender, ethnicity, and region. In this essay three different types of group interventions will be discussed and the intervention effectiveness will be evaluated by providing the results of outcome for each group. The participants included in these interventions were Chinese children, German adolescents, and African American female adults.
“Live a Positive Life”
Child depression affects 1-2% of children before they reach puberty. Child depression has become a serious health concern. This study took place in Hong Kong, the participants in this study were Chinese children from ages 9-11 that suffered from depression. The type of group utilized in this study was positive psychology therapy called “Live a Positive Life”, that was used to decrease depression and to increase the fullness of life by teaching these children to increase their way of thinking, how they feel, and how they act into a much positive form. This therapy is also meant to teach children how to cope with stressful life events. One of the theory interventions that were used was “Hope Intervention”, hope is what gives someone strength to be able to set goals, have steps to reach the goal, and to become motivated and be able to maintain motivation as the growth is happening. “About 10 studies adopted Synder’s definition of hope and used to designed intervention protocols to improve goal setting and planning skills, foster hopeful thinking, and enhance goal pursuit activities”. “Gratitude Intervention” was the other intervention used in the “Live a Positive Life” therapy program.
Some activities that were done in the gratitude intervention were to be grateful for the good things in their life, to write letters to people they are thankful for that have had a positive impact in their life, to keep a journal of what they are thankful for. These activities help the clients focus on the positive of life instead of focusing on the negative. The “Hope and Gratitude Intervention” met once a week for eight weeks, each session was 90 minuets long. Previous studies have shown that gratitude can increase positive emotions, and has shown to help children adapt coping skills to use in stressful life events. Also, hope lessens the depression and creates positive thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. The outcome of the assessment was positive, the children had to do a Hope scale assessment, asking from 0 none of the time to 6 all of the time how often they felt a certain way, and their responses were much positive then from how they were before the therapy, the outcome resulted as an increase to the child’s hope score. Also, gratitude questionnaire-6 was given to the children, the children had a higher score too showing more gratitude. This journal article was easy to understand and follow, the writer was organized and talked about the hope intervention in one section then the gratitude intervention in another section, then in two other sections he talked about both of the interventions outcomes individually of the therapy. The studied done was shown to be positive, assessments were done to see if the positive psychology therapy had a good outcome by giving the children a hope and gratitude questionnaire. Overall the article was very interesting and provided a lot of useful information.
Michi Intervention
“The rate of depressive disorders in German adolescents aged 11-17 years is reported to be 4.7% for males and 9.7% for females. CITE!!”. A total of 15 participants participated in this study, cognitive group therapy was used for depression treatment for this group of adolescents. Their ages ranged from 13-18, they were divide into three separate groups. The program was held for 5 weeks and met once a week for 75-90 minuet sessions. MICHI was the theory implemented for this group treatment. The sessions were done by following the MICHI manual. Session one, consisted of the clients getting to know each other and being educated about depression symptoms. In session two, the exercises and activities contents had to do with resource activation, input about relationship between thoughts, behaviors, and feelings, and also psychoeducation about the causes and effects of depression. Session three, focused more on activities that enhanced self-esteem, increase of behavioral activation, and were educated on dysfunctional cognitions. Session four, reviewed contents, provided coping skills, emotion regulation, and restructuring of dysfunctional cognitions. In session five clients learned how to solve problems to prevent relapsing. Each session consisted of going over material discussed from the last session, provided them with new information, sent them home with homework to turn in the following week, they also had an assessment using the Beck depression Inventory-revision questionnaire.
After each session if the client’s condition appears to be due to a mental illness or has been diagnosed, they had an opportunity to talk to the therapist individually. There was also a sixth “booster” session and it was to summarize the main points of MICHI. Nine out of the fifteen participants completed the therapy, three others completed five sessions. The outcome of the assessment was positive, the Children’s Depression Rating Scale (CDRS-R) and Becks Depression Inventory (BDI-II) showed how the intervention was effective the scores decreased enormously from the pre-intervention to the follow up assessment, 5 out of the 12 participants that completed 5 or the 6 sessions no longer met the criteria for clinically significant depression and also the suicidal ideation decreased from “severe” to “none to mild” there was a significant impact from pre-intervention to follow-up. This journal article was useful it contained important content to better explain the group intervention. The purpose of this article was to evaluate the effectiveness of the MICHI intervention. The purpose of this intervention was accomplished.
A Culturally Adapted Intervention
A culturally adapted intervention modifies the treatment or components to better help the cultural beliefs, emotions, and behaviors. The Nguzo Saba principles were used in this intervention, these are principles the African American cultural go by. The intervention used in this was the “Oh Happy Day Class” (OHDS), it uses cognitive behavioral therapy. This intervention was designed for African Americans adults that suffered from depressive disorder. This intervention took place in the United States at a University, in the group there were fifteen African American women 60 years and older. The intervention consisted of twelve sessions, met once a week and sessions lasted 2 ½ hours. After the completion of the intervention they met up 3 months later for a booster session for a post intervention.
On week one an introduction and overview of the group intervention and Nguzo Saba principles were discussed, this was discussed at the first session to inform participants this classes were meant to accommodate their cultural needs. Session two was meant to educate depression causes and effects, symptoms, and treatments, they discuss their beliefs which is that depression doesn’t occur because life situations rather it’s a medical condition. In the third session they discuss how depression affects their ethnicity. In the fourth session they discuss depression and chronic illnesses. They are given information on community resources in the fifth session. In the sixth and seventh session they talk about anger management on how to respond to the negative labeling, and how to use spirituality to cope with stressful events. The next four sessions they talk about these topics listed in this order constructive thinking, forgiveness, depression and pleasant activities, and lastly how to maintain a healthy life free from depression and developing a strategy using the principles of Nguzo Saba. At the beginning of each of the sessions participants got to eat and enjoy fellowship with each other for 30 minutes, the next hour the group focused on cognitive behavior activities and exercises like talk about any psychosocial issues they were dealing with and get emotional support from their group leaders and members. The second hour of the session contained psychoeducation elements with cognitive behavior therapy this session was focused on providing participants with more new ways to cope in a positive behavior.
Each participant was given a workbook and it contained the template structure to the intervention which included details of what each session would contain. The twelfth session which was the last on the intervention the main points were discussed and graduated. Participants had to meet three months later for a post intervention session. The outcome of this intervention was effective, it was measured by Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D) and the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HAM-D). Depression scores on the CES-D decreased significantly from baseline to week 12, and from the baseline to the 3 month follow-up, it went from moderate to mild depression. The HAM-D also showed a positive outcome the scores were significantly major it resulted of a negative number effect. This journal article was a little complicated for me to understand it because of the vocabulary used and the results of the scale were a bit confusing since I’m not very familiar with these two scales mentioned above. But overall it was a great article that provided all the information necessary like the purpose of the article, population, methods, measurements used, and the results.
Conclusion
Depression does not discriminate and can affect different types of people. It mentioned how depression had become a concern in Chinese children, German adolescents, and African American women. These group interventions were intended to reduce depression, reduce suicidal ideation, empower the participant, educate them, teach them positive coping skills, teach them to solve problems, change negative patterns of behavior, thoughts, and emotion into positive, and teaching them how to prevent from relapsing. Participants were given an assessment or two before their treatment to compare the results after the intervention was completed, and all three group therapies had a significant change. In the Chinese children their Hope and Gratitude scores were higher then what they were before treatment. The German adolescents had a significant impact too, those who completed 5 or the 6 sessions no longer met the criteria for clinically significant depression and also the suicidal ideation decreased from “severe” to “none to mild”. The CES-D and HAM-D scores in the African American women also decreased. Overall, all three group therapies had a positive outcome and theirs goals were accomplished through the interventions.
