Faculty Bibliography

This paper describes the implementation of Behavioral Activation (BA) as the core psychotherapy treatment within a broader clinician-led effort to establish a care pathway for adolescent depression in an academic medical center that served public and private hospital systems. This quality improvement effort required a standardized yet flexible approach to psychotherapy to be used by clinicians with a range of experience and training backgrounds while serving diverse clinical populations in child psychiatry and pediatric clinics. This paper highlights implementation of BA in treating adolescent depression across these varying systems. In particular, the paper emphasizes the application of BA as a principle-driven, treatment that enables flexibility across settings while remaining rooted in scientific evidence. The paper also reviews lessons learned from this effort that may support efforts to implement BA in other clinical settings and systems.

The present study examines the quality of peer relations as a mediator between exposure to IPV (intimate partner violence) and internalizing behaviors in a sample of 129 preadolescents and adolescents (ages 10-18), who were interviewed via telephone as part of a multigenerational, prospective, longitudinal study. Relational victimization is also examined as a moderator of IPV exposure on internalizing behaviors. Results demonstrate a significant association of exposure to severe IPV and internalizing behaviors. Relational victimization is found to moderate the effects of exposure to severe IPV on internalizing behaviors. The present findings suggest that the effects of exposure to IPV had a particularly important effect on the risk for internalizing problems if the adolescent also experienced relational victimization. Conversely, the receipt of prosocial behaviors buffer against the effects of IPV exposure on internalizing symptoms in teen girls.