TOUCHminds: Help-seeking in Adolescents With Anxiety

Adolescents frequently experience clinical and subclinical anxiety symptoms, yet many avoid seeking professional help. While universal interventions exist to promote help-seeking, targeted programs for adolescents with elevated anxiety symptoms remain scarce. Therefore, accessible and tailored strategies are needed to effectively promote help-seeking among this group. TOUCHminds is a web-based intervention designed to enhance help-seeking among adolescents with clinical or subclinical anxiety. The program consists of six self-guided modules featuring interactive activities (e.g., images, videos, simulation activities, and audio recordings), combined with three synchronous sessions led by a psychologist via videoconference. The intervention explicitly targets precursors of help-seeking, including mental health literacy, mental health stigma, self-compassion and readiness to change. This research project comprises two studies. Study I, a feasibility study involving 10 adolescents aged 15 to 19, will assess recruitment procedures, dropout rates, usage patterns, therapist fidelity, acceptability, usability, satisfaction, and preliminary effects. Study II, a randomized controlled trial (RCT), intends to include 96 adolescents randomly assigned to four groups: clinical intervention, clinical control, subclinical intervention, and subclinical control. Clinical participants are those who meet diagnostic criteria for one or more anxiety disorders, whereas subclinical participants present high self-reported anxiety but no mental disorder diagnosis. Intervention effects will based on self-report assessments conducted at pre-intervention, post-intervention (9 weeks later), and at 3-month follow-up. This research will provide evidence regarding the suitability and effectiveness of TOUCHminds in promoting help-seeking among adolescents experiencing different levels of anxiety symptoms. Findings will contribute to the field of empirically validated web-based interventions tailored specifically for adolescents.

Inclusion Criteria: For all experimental and control groups, the inclusion criteria are: * Aged between 15 and 19 years old at the time of screening; * Fluent in Portuguese; * Have access to a smartphone, tablet, or computer; * Have reliable internet access. Clinical Groups Specific: * Must meet criteria for a primary diagnosis of at least one anxiety disorder, as assessed by the MINI-KID (Rijo et al., 2016). Subclinical Groups Specific: * Must not meet diagnostic criteria for any mental health disorder, as assessed by the MINI-KID (Rijo et al., 2016). Exclusion Criteria: Exclusion criteria for all experimental and all control groups are: * Psychotic symptoms or suicidal risk as assessed via the Mini-Kid (Rijo et al., 2016); * Being part of the special needs teaching system. * Currently receiving psychological counselling.