Thriving in adversity: Do brief milieu interventions work for young adults in the developing world? A pragmatic randomized controlled trial

Abstract

Adolescence may be a window of opportunity to attenuate the effects of early social adversity, which impedes cognitive, emotional, and social development, and increases risk of psychopathology into adulthood. We ran a pragmatic randomized controlled trial to assess the impact of a brief intervention designed to facilitate life skills for psychosocial competence. Socially disadvantaged young people living in South India who had experienced early adversity (N = 645; age range = 17–22 years) participated in the intervention or were assigned to a wait-list control group. The intervention led to large differences in life skills between the two groups. This brief, scalable intervention can be made available to address the impact of early social adversity on young people's development.