Associated organisationsGeorge Washington University · King's College London · Transcultural Psychosocial Organization (TPO) Nepal · Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam · World Health Organization, SwitzerlandEurope PMC affiliations are not treated as award recipients or mapped locations.
Funding£4.0M
PeriodJul 2021 — Jun 2026
In plain English
AI plain-English summary
Poverty makes it harder for teenagers to regulate their emotions and focus on long-term goals, which in turn raises their risk of depression and anxiety. This study will develop and pilot-test an intervention that directly addresses that link in Colombia, Nepal, and South Africa. Current prevention programmes for adolescent mental health in low- and middle-income countries rarely tackle the root causes of poverty—such as unstable housing, food insecurity, and lack of opportunity—or the neuropsychological effects those conditions produce. The researchers argue that this is a major gap: teaching coping skills alone is unlikely to work if a teenager cannot see a viable path out of poverty. Their intervention combines self-regulation training with practical skills for academic and employment success, aiming to break the cycle. If the pilot trial shows promise, the approach could offer a scalable, evidence-based way to prevent depression and anxiety in the urban poor adolescents who need it most. The study will also produce validated measurement tools and a causal model of how poverty, self-regulation, and mental health interact—knowledge that could reshape how funders and governments design adolescent mental health programmes in low-resource settings.
View original technical description
Depression and anxiety are leading contributors to the burden of disease among adolescents in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC), and they disproportionally affect adolescents living in poverty. Yet, the evidence base for interventions that effectively prevent depression and anxiety among adolescents living in poverty is weak. One major shortcoming is that interventions often fail to address poverty-related social determinants of mental health and neuropsychological consequences of poverty (such as impaired self-regulation). The aim of this study is to develop and pilot-test an intervention that equips adolescents with skills to escape poverty and strengthens self-regulation, thus preventing adolescent depression and anxiety in urban LMIC settings.The study objectives are to: (1) develop a theoretical model of the causal mechanisms linking poverty, self-regulation, and depression and anxiety among adolescents (age 10-19 years); (2) collaboratively develop a multi-component selective prevention intervention targeting self-regulation and skills for academic and employment success among adolescents at high risk of developing depression or anxiety living in urban poverty in Colombia, Nepal and South Africa; (3) adapt and validate key instruments to measure eligibility, implementation, mediators, and outcomes of the intervention; and (4) undertake a 4-arm pilot randomized controlled trial of the selective prevention intervention in each site.
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