Project

The Depression and Substance Use Prevention Project

Project Description

This project evaluates the feasibility and preliminary efficacy of the Depression and Substance Use Prevention (DSUP) program. DSUP is a parent-training preventive intervention adapted from two existing, evidence-based programs: one that targets adolescent depression and another that targets adolescent substance use. The program is designed for families of depressed parents with children between the ages of 12-15 years. The overall objective of the program is to improve parenting and parent-child interactions, as well as to prevent depression and substance use, and the co-occurrence of these problems, among teens. This project creates the DSUP intervention and provides a preliminary test of the efficacy of the program among families randomly assigned to experimental and control conditions.