Speaker
Description
Abstract
Mental health has been a major concern in the college-aged population. With the ideal counselor-student ratio of 1 to 250 and with the increasing rates of college students with various mental health concerns, the treatment gap between students’ need and the service utilization suggests that more accessible mental health services are needed. The aim of the present study is to design a school-based Transdiagnostic Intervention which can be applied across a range of mental disorders to treat an array of commonly co-occurring symptoms at the same time. Among the two-hundred one (201) students who meet the cut-off score for psychological distress, ninety-seven (97) of the participants agreed and were included in the 2-arm randomized controlled trial. Participants (n=36) assigned to Transdiagnostic Intervention (TI) were assessed before the treatment and at the end of the treatment. Care-As-Usual (CAU) participants’ (n=34) pre-test and post-test were assessed on the same time period with TI participants. After a 2-month period, both the TI and CAU groups resulted in lower psychological distress scores. The effects of TI on intolerance of uncertainty, repetitive negative thinking, experiential avoidance and distress tolerance were evident in the study. The effectiveness of a Transdiagnostic Intervention as a school-based mental health program in low-income, Asian country responds to the call for a shift towards alternative low-intensity treatment approaches that can have a greater public mental health impact.
