Online, 30-minute self-administered program for youth

Online, 30-minute self-administered program for youth

Youth will complete the Pubertal Development Scale, given effects of puberty on depression onset.

The ACEs questionnaire will ask parents about their child's and their own exposure to violence, childhood emotional, physical, or sexual abuse, and household dysfunction during childhood.

Adolescents' self-hate will be assessed using the 7-item Self-Hate Scale (SHS). Adolescents will indicate the extent to which each statement is true for them (e.g. "I hate myself") on a 7-point Likert scale. The SHS is a valid measure of self-hate, with excellent internal consistency.

Adolescents will complete the 99-item version of the IDAS-II. Respondents indicate the extent to which they had experienced each symptom "during the past two weeks, including today" on a 5-point scale ranging from not at all to extremely. The IDAS contains scales evaluating levels of Dysphoria; Well-Being; Panic; Suicidality, Lassitude, and Insomnia; Social Anxiety and Ill Temper; Traumatic Intrusions scale; and Appetite Loss and Appetite Gain; and Depression and Dysphoria. The IDAS-II is well-validated and nationally-normed for use with adolescents.

Given high comorbidity between depression and anxiety, adolescent anxiety symptom severity will be assessed via adolescent and parent reports using the SCARED: a reliable, valid, widely used youth anxiety assessment with analog parent and youth-report forms.

Youths' approach versus disengagement from rewarding activities will be assessed via the BADS, a 9-item youth-report questionnaire with strong reliability, predictive validity, and sensitivity to change following BA for adolescent MD.

The SRET is a web-based behavioral measure of self-referent information processing biases that assesses judgements of self-descriptiveness, response latencies and free recall of emotionally valanced stimuli. Adolescents will make decisions about whether positive and negative adjectives are self-descriptive. Participants view various adjectives (26 positive adjectives, 26 negative adjectives) one at a time and make rapid judgments about whether or not each word presented described themselves following word offset. Participants will be told to use the Q or P keys on their keyboard to answer whether the word described them or not. Each trial will be followed by a 1,500 ms intertrial interval.

The DRS-2 is a 9-item measure evaluating restrictive eating, bingeing, and purging behaviors in participants. 6 items ask adolescents whether or not they have engaged in restrictive eating, bingeing, or purging behaviors in the past year or in the past 3 months (0 = no; 1 = yes). The other 3 items assess the frequency of these behaviors over the past 28 days.

Four items from a self-report version of the SITBI-SF will be used to assess each adolescent's lifetime history of suicide ideation, suicide attempts, and deliberate self-harm. The SITBI-SF is a widely used measure of the continuum of suicidality and self-harm and has demonstrated high test-retest reliability, high internal consistency, and moderate-to-high concurrent validity. Score range for this measure can range widely (per wide variation in instances of self-harming behaviors across one's lifetime); thus, we anticipate a minimum score of 0 and are unable to predict the top (maximum) score.

The SCSC is a 20-item scale measuring youths' perceived ability to shape the personal impact of objective conditions on oneself, by adjusting oneself to fit those conditions. Youth rate agreement with items reflecting various kinds of secondary control, such as adjusting cognition ("When something bad happens, I can find a way to think about it that makes me feel better"). The SCSC has shown acceptable reliability and validity in a large youth sample.

The Becks Hopelessness Scale (BHS) asks both parents and youth to rate 4 statements based on their sense of hopelessness. Participants rate the 4 statements on a 4 point scale ranging from 0 (Absolutely Disagree) to 3 (Absolutely Agree). Total score ranges from 0 to 12, with higher scores indicating greater levels of hopelessness.

The Primary Control Scale for Children (PCSC) is a 24-item scale measuring youths' perceived ability to influence or alter objective events or conditions through personal effort. Youth rate agreement with statements about their ability to exert primary control (e.g., "I can do well on tests if I study hard"; "I can get other kids to like me if I try"). This PCSC has shown acceptable internal consistency, 6-month test-retest reliability, and strong inverse relations to adolescent depressive symptoms.

The IPTQ asks youth to rate the extent of their agreement with three statements linked to the malleability of personality, using a 1-to-7 Likert scale (e.g. "Your personality is something about you that you can't change very much." Higher summed scores on these three items indicate a stronger fixed personality mindset, a lower scores, a stronger growth personality mindset.

The BFAMG provides an overview of family functioning. Adolescents and parents rate 14 statements describing the family (e.g. "We feel loved in our family.") using a 0-3 Likert scale.

The MVPS is a self-report scale assessing adolescents' experiences of peer victimization. This study will include the social manipulation, verbal victimization, and physical victimization scales, totaling 12 items. Adolescents rate how often peers have victimized them in various ways in the past year (e.g. "called me names"; "tried to turn my friends against me").

The ULS is a widely used self-report scale of loneliness in adolescents. The brief 8-item version will be used here. Adolescents rate agreement with 8 items reflecting loneliness (e.g. "I feel left out"; "I feel isolated from others"). The ULS has shown adequate reliability and validity in adolescent samples.

The BSI-18 is a valid, reliable screening tool for adult (here, parental) psychological distress. Adult respondents rate endorsement of 18 physical and emotional complaints on a 0-4 Likert scale. The BSI-18 includes 3 subscales for somatic, anxiety, and depressive symptoms, respectively. The total sum score yields an additional total distress score.

Parents will complete the Barriers to Accessing Care Evaluation at baseline, modified for use by parents. Parents rate the degree to which various beliefs, concerns, circumstances, and logistical difficulties have stopped, delayed or discouraged them from getting professional care for their child's mental health problem. Higher total scores indicate greater perceived barriers to care.

Prognostic Pessimism for Depression (PPD) consists of five short questions, adapted from previous research, that aim to quantify a participants' perception of depression as a fixed or malleable condition. Both parents and adolescents will complete the PPD. Questions ask how permanent participants expect depression to be, why, and what might make it less so. An analogous set of questions are posed to parents, who are asked to respond about their children.

Adapted from CDC Item Bank questions, these questions ask parents about the effects of COVID-19 on their families. Questions ask about stress caused by the pandemic, coping, illness, and effects on other items such as finances, mental health treatment, and employment.

The ESM surveys will include selected items from the Patient Health Questionnaire-9, a widely-used measure of adolescent and adult depressive symptoms. Items will assess symptoms that could plausibly shift in any 2-3 hour period. At the end of the final survey on each day, adolescents will be asked two additional free response questions: "What was the most pleasant event today?" and "What was the most unpleasant event today?".