The 12th Peter Miller Musser Lecture in Depression: Scaling Single-Session Interventions to Bridge Gaps in Mental Healthcare Ecosystems

In this talk, I will overview my research on developing brief, mechanism-targeted interventions for youth mental health problems; identifying the mechanisms underlying their effects; and testing novel approaches to dissemination. First, I will present meta-analytic evidence supporting the promise of very brief (single-session) youth mental health interventions. Next, I will share work on two interconnected targets that may inform the design of such interventions: family-level factors, such as parental expectancies for mental health treatment, and youth cognitions, such as beliefs about whether personal traits are malleable (versus fixed) by nature. This will include results from recent, large-scale randomized trials targeting youths and parents testing brief, computer-based interventions. Finally, I will preview ongoing and future projects, which aim to harness modifiable targets to build novel, theoretically precise interventions; capitalize on technological innovations to expand how and where such interventions might be accessed; and tailoring evidence-based single-session interventions to meet the needs of historically underserved populations, including sexual minority, gender-diverse, and racial and ethnic minority youths.