4 - (3 Min 4) Evaluating Change Occurring During Single Session Interventions for Trauma-exposed Youth

Abstract

Introduction: Persistent exposure to community violence with insufficient access to evidence-based behavioral health care results in a plethora of mental health problems for youth (Wade et al., 2022). To promote equitable, sustainable CBT, the field needs to shift toward accessible, population-based models that address the wide-range of mental health needs of as many trauma-exposed youth as possible. Transdiagnostic single session interventions (SSI) implemented in group formats in the community offer a promising approach. Overall, SSI have been shown to be effective across outcomes and age groups (Schleider et al., 2025), but little is known about whether and how SSI can help youth exposed to the trauma of community violence.

Current Study: The current study presents pilot data from an ongoing initiative focused on delivering effective mental health services to people whose economic and housing options confine them to communities of concentrated poverty and high rates of violent crime. We implemented an evidence-based transdiagnostic treatment as a SSI to groups of children attending out-of-school-time (OST) programs. We hypothesized that we would observe pre-post SSI increases in children’s coping skills as well as decreased negative emotions and stress.

Participants: . Participants were 58 racially and ethnically diverse children (M age = 8.70 years, SD = 2.01, 55% male, 20.3% participants identified as mixed race, 40.7% as Hispanic/Latinx/Latine only, 8.5% participants as Black/African American only, 1.7% white/ European American only, 1.7% as American Indian or Alaskan Native only, and 0 people identified as Asian. 27.1% did not disclose race or ethnicity. ) attending OST community centers.) There were 124 observations across 11 SSI groups offered (some students attended multiple SSI).

Method: We implemented a group SSI derived from the Unified Protocol for Children (UP-C; Ehrenreich-May et al., 2018). Children rated their agreement with eight items on a 6-point scale before and after the SSI that assessed worry, anger, and coping. Children reported on current level of stress using a 10-point scale.

Results: As hypothesized, children reported significant increases in coping from pre (M = 4.01, SD = 1.36) to post (M = 4.52, SD = 1.48), t(123)=.451, p<.001. However, children reported significant increases in worry from pre (M = 2.57, SD = 2.14) to post (M = 3.28, SD = 2.39), and in anger from pre (M = 2.74, SD = 2.15) to post (M = 3.45, SD = 2.39), t(122)=3.17, p<.001. There was no change in stress.

Discussion: These findings suggest that children participating in CBT SSI groups experience a quick boost in coping skills. The finding that children participating in SSI experience an increase in negative emotions is inconsistent with existing literature that demonstrates no negative impact of SSI (Schleider et al., 2025). While it is possible that these children experienced an increase in negative emotions, it is also possible that children participating in SSI demonstrate an increased ability to acknowledge negative feelings, which may be common among youth living in multiply stressed communities. We expect to double our sample size in the next five months, allowing for more robust analyses.