Honest Open Proud for Adolescents With Mental Illness

University of Ulm

Status and phase: Completed; Phase 2

Conditions: Secrecy Versus Disclosure Among Adolescents With Mental Illness

Treatments: Behavioral: Honest Open Proud (HOP)

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT02751229

HOP-Adolescents

Details and patient eligibility

About

The purpose of the study is to evaluate the efficacy of the group-based intervention 'Honest Open Proud' among adolescents with mental illness.

Full description

Both due to fear of public stigma and due to self-stigma or shame, people with mental illness may decide to keep their condition a secret or even to withdraw from other people altogether in order to minimise the risk of being labelled. Secrecy can help on the short term to protect individuals from public stigma, but often it has negative long-term consequences such as social isolation, distress and unemployment. Disclosure, on the other hand, carries the risk to be discriminated by others, but can reduce the burden of secrecy, lead to support by others and reduce public stigma. In this study investigators aim to evaluate whether a group program run both by people with mental illness (peers) and professionals helps to reduce self-stigma and makes it easier for adolescents to handle the necessary choices related to secrecy versus disclosure.

Enrollment: 100 estimated patients

Sex: All

Ages: 13 to 18 years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• At least one self-reported current axis I or axis II disorder according to DSM-5 (American Psychiatric Association, 2013), which is not restricted to only substance-related disorder(s)
• Age 13 to 18
• Ability to provide written informed consent
• Fluid in German (needed for self-report measures)
• At least a moderate level of self-reported disclosure-related distress/difficulty (score 4 or higher on the screening item 'In general, how distressed or worried are you in terms of secrecy or disclosure of your mental illness to others?', rated from 1, not at all, to 7, very much)

Exclusion criteria

• Self-reported diagnosis of only a substance- or alcohol-related disorder, without non-substance related current psychiatric comorbidity. We will exclude people who only have a substance-/alcohol-related disorder because the disclosure of these disorders is not the topic of the HOP intervention
• Intellectual disability
• Organic disorders

Trial design

Primary purpose: Treatment

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: Single Blind

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100 participants in 2 patient groups

Honest Open Proud

Experimental group

Description:

The group program is about disclosure ('coming out') versus secrecy of one's mental illness. The groups are facilitated by peers (young adults with mental illness) and mental health professionals. Each group runs for three weeks, one meeting per week, and two hours per meeting. Fidelity to manual: rated by PhD student in each session as proportion of key topics covered

Treatment:

Behavioral: Honest Open Proud (HOP)

Control Group

No Intervention group

Description:

treatment as usual (TAU)