Promoting Mental Health in Young Children - a Dialogue Based Approach in Kindergartens (PRO-DIALOG)

Haukeland University Hospital

Status: Enrolling

Conditions: Child Development; Child Behavior

Treatments: Other: Dialogue Based Early Detection; Other: Traditional parent-teacher meeting

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT06471816

151749

Details and patient eligibility

About

The goal of this clinical trial is to learn if the novel Dialogue Based Early Detection (DBED) method can prevent impaired mental health in kindergarten children. It will also learn about the screening properties of DBED to identify children with impaired mental health, if DBED facilitates early interventions, and if DBED is well accepted and sustainable in an ordinary kindergarten setting.

The main questions it aims to answer are:

• Do children in kindergartens where DBED is implemented develop better mental health scores than children in kindergarten where DBED is not implemented?
• How well identifies DBED kindergarten children with impaired mental health compared to a traditional screening instrument (the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire)?
• What is the impact of DBED on activation of interventions for mental health problems?
• What is the social validity of DBED?

Researchers will compare outcomes in kindergartens where DBED is implemented with outcomes in kindergartens where it's not.

• During the last three years of kindergarten attendance participants (parents of kindergarten children) in the intervention kindergartens will take part in the biannual DBED parent-teacher meetings, while participants in the control kindergartens will take part in traditional parent-teacher meetings.
• Twice a year all participants will answer questionnaires of the child's mental health and parental stress during the follow-up period (3 years in kindergarten and 2 first years in school).
• Participants in the intervention kindergartens will answer user satisfaction questionnaires after every parent-teacher meeting.
• The kindergarten teachers will report on type and time of supportive interventions for each participating child during the follow-up period in kindergarten.

Enrollment: 200 estimated patients

Sex: All

Ages: 2 to 3 years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Attendance in kindergarten
• Inclusion during the first half-year of the third last year in kindergarten

Exclusion criteria

• Parents don't communicate in Norwegian or English

Trial design

Primary purpose: Prevention

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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200 participants in 2 patient groups

Intervention kindergartens

Experimental group

Description:

Participants (parents of kindergarten children) will take part in the biannual DBED parent-teacher meetings.

Treatment:

Other: Dialogue Based Early Detection

Control kindergartens

Active Comparator group

Description:

Participants (parents of kindergarten children) will take part in traditional parent-teacher meetings.

Treatment:

Other: Traditional parent-teacher meeting