About this session

Thursday, 11:50 AM - 1:20 PM

The future of youth mental health is mobile, digital, wearable, and personalized just-in-time.

Few evidence-based interventions for mental health are designed to provide support precisely when youth need it most. For instance, suicidal crises often occur outside the timing of outpatient therapy appointments or shortly after presenting to an emergency room. Sleep disruptions at bedtime rarely align with standard therapy sessions. Traditional skills-based mental health interventions, such as cognitive behavioral therapy and dialectical behavior therapy, rely on skills taught in sessions to generalize to patients’ everyday lives (Kazantzis et al., 2000). However, youth frequently report difficulties in practicing and applying these skills outside of sessions (Bru et al., 2013). Just-in-time adaptive interventions (JITAIs) have the potential to revolutionize mental health care by facilitating out-of-session skill practice while enhancing accessibility and scalability (Comer, 2015). JITAIs leverage mobile and wearable technologies to deliver the personalized care long desired in mental healthcare.
This symposium will showcase three innovative projects representing the next generation of mental health interventions for children and adolescents. The first talk will introduce Sidekick, a digital JITAI aimed at improving sleep and physical activity to enhance mood in adolescents within primary care settings. The second talk will explore iKinnect, a digital just-in-time intervention adapted for addressing suicidal thoughts and behaviors in youth. The third presentation will highlight Colliga, an AI-assisted JITAI developed for child and family mental health. Finally, Dr. Nicholas Allen will discuss how Sidekick, iKinnect, and Colliga represent a new era of behavioral interventions to prevent mental health issues early in development.

Paper #1
Title	Developing Sidekick, a Digital Just-in-Time Adaptive Intervention (JITAI) for Adolescent Depression Treatment in Collaborative Care
Presenting author	Jessica Jenness, University of Washington, United States

Paper #2
Title	Adapting a Dyadic Application for Suicidal Adolescents and their Caregivers seen in Primary Care
Presenting author	Sarah Danzo, Ph.D., University of Washington, United States

Paper #3
Title	Leveraging AI and Just-In-Time Adaptive Interventions to Improve Family Mental Health Using the Colliga App
Presenting author	Jacqueline Duong, University of Texas at Austin, United States

View all paper details

Session chair
Adam Bryant Miller, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, United States

Discussant
Nicholas Allen, Ph.D., University of Oregon, United States

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