Post by Anne Bischops

🧠 Accessible digital mental health support for adolescents with chronic medical conditions Excited to share that our paper on RESICO, a digital resilience group coaching program, is out now! 📄Read the full article in Journal of Adolescent Health here: https://lnkd.in/eQCaFpSy The problem: Up to 30% of adolescents with chronic medical conditions develop comorbid mental health problems. Preventive programs exist, but many struggle with low recruitment and high dropout. What we did: We developed RESICO (RESIlience Coaching): a brief digital program consisting of five online group coaching sessions, complemented by educational computer games developed specifically for the sessions. The aim was a format that is accessible, engaging, and compatible with everyday adolescent life. We then evaluated RESICO in a randomized waitlist-controlled trial with 116 adolescents with chronic medical conditions aged 11-17 years. What we found: • High acceptance and retention • No significant change in overall resilience (RS-13) • Improvement in physical well-being (KIDSCREEN) at 4-month follow-up • High engagement, with many participants wanting to continue coaching This project was less about demonstrating a single outcome and more about showing that digital, group-based mental health support can be built, delivered, and accepted by a group that is traditionally hard to reach. Importantly, we outline possible reasons for absence of effects on overall resilience and concrete implications for future digital prevention studies. I was PI on this study at Universitätsklinikum Düsseldorf supported by the Faculty of Medicine, University of Düsseldorf , and I’m grateful to all the participants and our wonderful study team who helped building this program from scratch: Luis Brehmer, Dr. Lisa Körner, Anna Hördermann, Iris Bischops, Prof. Juergen Dukart, Dr. Nora Schaal, Prof. Dr. J. Martin, Prof. Dr. Michael Bhatty, Prof. Ertan Mayatepek and Prof. Thomas Meissner