Abstract
BackgroundNorwegian health, care, and welfare services are experiencing increased demands to deliver services that are safe, effective, of high quality, and that ensure user involvement. Yet, evidence-based treatment for common disorders such as depression, anxiety, trauma, and behavioral problems in children are not regularly used in clinical practice in Norway. Possible explanations for this are that many standard, evidence-based treatments may have difficulty addressing the complexity and comorbidity of referred children and the fact that children’s treatment needs often shift during treatment. The Modular Approach to Therapy for children with Anxiety, Depression, Trauma and Conduct problems (MATCH-ADTC) was designed to address these challenges and reduce some of the barriers to therapists’ use of evidence-based treatment in their practice.Methods/designParticipants will include 280 children (aged 6–14.5 years at intake) who receive treatment in child and adolescent mental health outpatient clinics in Norway, and their families. Families are randomly assigned to either the experimental group receiving treatment from therapists trained in MATCH, or to the comparison group receiving treatment from therapists delivering treatment as usual (TAU). Data on children’s symptomology, child and family functioning, demographics, background information, and mental health outcomes are collected as well as frequent feedback on treatment response, plus video-recordings of treatment sessions and implementation quality scores from each participating clinic. Questionnaires are administered in six waves.DiscussionMATCH has been tested in the US with promising results, but we do not know whether this treatment approach will produce similar results in Norway. The implications of this study arePossibly better treatment outcomes and/or more efficient improvements for children and families treated in mental health outpatient clinics in NorwayClinicians learning to use more evidence-based practices in their treatmentImplementation of standard procedures for obtaining feedback from children and families and sharing the feedback with cliniciansIncreased understanding, at the end of the trial, of whether introducing MATCH improves outcomes for children and families treated in mental health outpatient clinicsTrial registrationISRCTN, registration number: ISRCTN24029895. Registered on 8 August 2016.
Highlights
Norwegian health, care, and welfare services are experiencing increased demands to deliver services that are safe, effective, of high quality, and that ensure user involvement
Better treatment outcomes and/or more efficient improvements for children and families treated in mental health outpatient clinics in Norway
At the end of the trial, of whether introducing MATCH improves outcomes for children and families treated in mental health outpatient clinics
Summary
Guidance and Monitoring of MATCH treatment Monitoring of treatment progress in therapy is done via the PATH system, where the therapists fill out a session note for every session: Session number, date, person(s) present, MATCH modules used, additional information (e.g., no modules used, crisis of the week), session activities (prior homework completed, new homework assigned, role play, in vivo exercises, summary of session, plan for session). The random assignment of this trial elicits ethical considerations as some families may be disappointed by their assignment to the TAU group These families are, as are all the families participating in the study, assured that they will receive treatment within the child and adolescent mental health clinics, and these clinics will follow regular safety procedures and guidelines for treatment. The therapists have the possibility of discussing their MATCH cases with their team leader in weekly team meetings, but the team leaders are not themselves trained in MATCH and most of them know less about the intervention The results from this trial will produce knowledge about both how MATCH treatment is delivered in existing child and adolescent outpatient clinics in Norway, and the content and delivery of TAU.
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