426 – Interpersonal psychotherapy for treating psychological disturbances in adolescents who experienced bullied experiences: randomized case control study

Abstract

This case-control study aimed to assess the intervention effects of six-session interpersonal psychotherapy (IPT-A) on reducing the severity of anxiety and depression in adolescent victims. A total of 30 adolescents who had clinical significant level after experiencing bullied experiences were allocated to a six-session course of IPT-A (N = 15) or to treatment as usual (TAU) (N = 15). T test was performed to examine the effect of IPT-A on reducing the severity of anxiety and depression related to the bullied events. Pre-intervention age, sex, anxiety and depression showed no significant difference between two groups. As the preintervention severity of two groups were no significant different, results showed the IPT-A group to have significantly lower post-intervention severity levels of anxiety and depression (p< .05) than the TAU group. Effective size showed moderate to high level between IPT-A and TAU. The results of this study support the effectiveness of the IPT-A in improving anxiety symptoms and depression in adolescents experiencing traumatic bullied experiences.