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Depression in Adolescents with ASD: A Pilot RCT of a Group Intervention

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Abstract

Depression is a potentially life threatening affective disorder that is highly prevalent in individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). This study aimed to evaluate the feasibility, acceptability and preliminary efficacy of a cognitive behavioural intervention for depression in adolescents with ASD. Participants were randomly assigned to the intervention group, or wait-list control group. Although recruitment was extremely difficult, attendance was favourable and attrition was low, and participants reported being satisfied with the programme. No significant treatment effect was revealed on the Beck Depression Inventory or Emotion Regulation Questionnaire. However despite the small sample size (n = 20), there was a trending treatment effect measured by the Depression Anxiety Stress Scale: Depression Subscale. Limitations and areas of future research are discussed.

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Acknowledgments

This project would like to acknowledge Tony Attwood and Michelle Garnett’s assistance to the project. Attwood and Garnett developed the Exploring Depression programme evaluated in this paper, and conducted two full day workshops to train psychologists to run the groups. This project was conducted as part of Damian Santomauro’s PhD dissertation and was funded by an Australian Postgraduate Award scholarship.

Author Contributions

All authors contributed to conception and design of this study. DS managed participant recruitment, running of the groups, and statistical analyses. KS and JS provided supervision for the groups. DS wrote the initial draft and all coauthors provided input on subsequent versions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Queensland Centre for Mental Health Research, School of Public Health, The University of Queensland, Locked Bag 500, Archerfield, Brisbane, QLD, 4108, Australia

    Damian Santomauro

  2. School of Psychology, The University of Queensland, McElwain Building, St Lucia, Brisbane, QLD, 4072, Australia

    Jeanie Sheffield & Kate Sofronoff

Authors
  1. Damian Santomauro
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  2. Jeanie Sheffield
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  3. Kate Sofronoff
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Damian Santomauro.

Appendix

Appendix

See Table 4.

Table 4 Session outline of the exploring depression programme
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Santomauro, D., Sheffield, J. & Sofronoff, K. Depression in Adolescents with ASD: A Pilot RCT of a Group Intervention. J Autism Dev Disord 46, 572–588 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-015-2605-4

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