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Youth StepCare: a pilot study of an online screening and recommendations service for depression and anxiety among youth patients in general practice

BACKGROUND: General Practitioners (GPs) are ideally placed to identify and manage emerging mental illness in young people, however, many report low levels of confidence in doing so. A web-based universal screening service delivered via a mobile tablet, Youth StepCare, was developed to assist GPs in...

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Autores principales: Parker, Belinda Louise, Achilles, Melinda Rose, Subotic-Kerry, Mirjana, O’Dea, Bridianne
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6945483/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31910811
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12875-019-1071-z
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author Parker, Belinda Louise
Achilles, Melinda Rose
Subotic-Kerry, Mirjana
O’Dea, Bridianne
author_facet Parker, Belinda Louise
Achilles, Melinda Rose
Subotic-Kerry, Mirjana
O’Dea, Bridianne
author_sort Parker, Belinda Louise
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: General Practitioners (GPs) are ideally placed to identify and manage emerging mental illness in young people, however, many report low levels of confidence in doing so. A web-based universal screening service delivered via a mobile tablet, Youth StepCare, was developed to assist GPs in identifying depression and anxiety symptoms in youth patients. This service also provided evidence-based treatment recommendations and fortnightly monitoring of symptoms. The current study assessed the feasibility and acceptability of delivering the Youth StepCare service in Australian general practices. METHODS: A 12-week uncontrolled trial was undertaken between August 2018 and January 2019 in two general practices in NSW, Australia. The service was offered to all youth patients aged 14 to 17 years who visited a participating GP during the screening period with their parent or guardian. Youth patients reported the presence of depressive and anxiety symptoms using the self-report Patient Health Questionnaire-9 and the Generalised Anxiety Disorder Questionnaire-7. New cases were defined as those who reported symptoms but were not currently seeking help from their GP, nor had sought help in the past. Feasibility and acceptability among GPs and practice staff were assessed using a battery of questionnaires. RESULTS: Five GPs and 6 practice staff took part. A total of 46 youth patients were approached, 28 consented, and 19 completed the screener (67.9%). Nine reported symptoms of anxiety or depression, two of which were new cases (22.2%). GPs and practice staff were satisfied with the service, reporting that there was a need for the service and that they would use it again. CONCLUSIONS: The Youth StepCare service appears to be a useful tool for identifying youth with unidentified symptoms of mental illness that can be easily embedded into general practice. Further research would benefit from exploring the factors affecting initial GP uptake and a larger trial is required to determine the efficacy of the service on young people’s symptom reduction.
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spelling pubmed-69454832020-01-07 Youth StepCare: a pilot study of an online screening and recommendations service for depression and anxiety among youth patients in general practice Parker, Belinda Louise Achilles, Melinda Rose Subotic-Kerry, Mirjana O’Dea, Bridianne BMC Fam Pract Research Article BACKGROUND: General Practitioners (GPs) are ideally placed to identify and manage emerging mental illness in young people, however, many report low levels of confidence in doing so. A web-based universal screening service delivered via a mobile tablet, Youth StepCare, was developed to assist GPs in identifying depression and anxiety symptoms in youth patients. This service also provided evidence-based treatment recommendations and fortnightly monitoring of symptoms. The current study assessed the feasibility and acceptability of delivering the Youth StepCare service in Australian general practices. METHODS: A 12-week uncontrolled trial was undertaken between August 2018 and January 2019 in two general practices in NSW, Australia. The service was offered to all youth patients aged 14 to 17 years who visited a participating GP during the screening period with their parent or guardian. Youth patients reported the presence of depressive and anxiety symptoms using the self-report Patient Health Questionnaire-9 and the Generalised Anxiety Disorder Questionnaire-7. New cases were defined as those who reported symptoms but were not currently seeking help from their GP, nor had sought help in the past. Feasibility and acceptability among GPs and practice staff were assessed using a battery of questionnaires. RESULTS: Five GPs and 6 practice staff took part. A total of 46 youth patients were approached, 28 consented, and 19 completed the screener (67.9%). Nine reported symptoms of anxiety or depression, two of which were new cases (22.2%). GPs and practice staff were satisfied with the service, reporting that there was a need for the service and that they would use it again. CONCLUSIONS: The Youth StepCare service appears to be a useful tool for identifying youth with unidentified symptoms of mental illness that can be easily embedded into general practice. Further research would benefit from exploring the factors affecting initial GP uptake and a larger trial is required to determine the efficacy of the service on young people’s symptom reduction. BioMed Central 2020-01-07 /pmc/articles/PMC6945483/ /pubmed/31910811 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12875-019-1071-z Text en © The Author(s). 2020 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Research Article
Parker, Belinda Louise
Achilles, Melinda Rose
Subotic-Kerry, Mirjana
O’Dea, Bridianne
Youth StepCare: a pilot study of an online screening and recommendations service for depression and anxiety among youth patients in general practice
title Youth StepCare: a pilot study of an online screening and recommendations service for depression and anxiety among youth patients in general practice
title_full Youth StepCare: a pilot study of an online screening and recommendations service for depression and anxiety among youth patients in general practice
title_fullStr Youth StepCare: a pilot study of an online screening and recommendations service for depression and anxiety among youth patients in general practice
title_full_unstemmed Youth StepCare: a pilot study of an online screening and recommendations service for depression and anxiety among youth patients in general practice
title_short Youth StepCare: a pilot study of an online screening and recommendations service for depression and anxiety among youth patients in general practice
title_sort youth stepcare: a pilot study of an online screening and recommendations service for depression and anxiety among youth patients in general practice
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6945483/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31910811
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12875-019-1071-z
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