MICHI - A Brief, Manualized Cognitive Behavioral Group Therapy for the Treatment of Depression in Adolescents: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Cognitive behavioral psychotherapy (CBT) is one of the first choices for the treatment of depression in adolescents but to date no German treatment program has been evaluated in a randomized controlled trial. The study comprised 38 depressed adolescents (M = 15.86; SD = +/- 1.70 years old; 78.9% girls) whowere randomly assigned to a control group (CG), a group that received treatment as usual (TAU), or an intervention group (IG) that participated in a brief outpatient group CBT called MICHI. To determine treatment efficacy, changes in the CDRS-R and BDI-II scores before and after TAU or CBT were collected and compared between groups. The interaction effects, of groups and time points, were significant (p = .02) for the CDRS-R, with a moderate effect size (d(korr) = .75), and for the BDI-II (p = .04), with a small effect size (d(korr) = .39). The results of the present study reveal that a brief CBT, in a group format, was significantly more effective than TAU.