The Friendship Bench for adolescents: evaluating strategies for scaling interventions to treat common mental disorders among adolescents in Zimbabwe

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Common mental disorders, (CMD) namely anxiety and depression, are highly prevalent among adolescents globally and are the main cause of disability-adjusted life years in this age group. In low resource settings CMD are under diagnosed and there is a large treatment gap. In adults, treatment for CMD delivered by non-specialist health workers is effective. We recently completed a trial of a lay health worker (LHW) delivered intervention (the Friendship Bench Intervention (FBI); www.friendshipbenchzimbabwe.org) in Zimbabwe. It was highly effective at treating CMD in adults. The FBI comprises a 6-session psychological intervention based on problem-solving therapy, delivered by a trained LHW. Participants who do not respond well are referred to a nurse for more specialised treatment. Grand Challenges Canada (GCC) and MSF-Holland are funding scale-up of the FBI for adults to 60 primary care clinics in 3 cities in Zimbabwe in 2016. This scale up provides the ideal framework to introduce and evaluate the FBI for younger patients (16-19 years old).Data from the original trial indicate that the FBI was equally effective in young people (aged 18-22 years) as in older adults, but a key barrier is that relatively few young people attend clinics. We plan to develop a youth friendly FBI package which is i) delivered by trained and supported youth LHWs; ii) delivered within community settings including schools and clinics; iii) includes targeting of vulnerable young people (including pregnant teenagers and young offenders) iv) supported by community activities to reduce stigma surrounding poor mental health and raise awareness of adolescent mental health specifically and the youth-friendly FBI in particular. We will determine the uptake, effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of the two strategies to deliver the FBI to 16-19 year olds with CMD in a sustainable way; (a) the usual care clinic-based delivery currently being scaled-up for adults, and (b) the youth-friendly FBI package. Our hypothesis is that implementation of the youth friendly package will i) increase the acceptability and uptake of the intervention to 16-19 year olds compared with usual care FBI; and ii) be an effective and sustainable model to treat CMD among 16-19 year olds. We will randomly select 30 clinics to receive the usual care FBI and 30 clinics to receive the youth friendly FBI package. Participants will be individuals aged 16-19 years who screen positive for CMD using the locally validated Shona Symptom Questionnaire -14 (SSQ-14). A random sample of 500 eligible participants attending the clinics will be selected over a 6 month period and asked consent to participate in the outcome evaluation 6 months after they receive the FB intervention. The interview after 6 months will be conducted either in person or by telephone and will include socio-demographic data and a comprehensive mental health assessment including the SSQ-14, Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9), Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7) and WHO Disability Assessment Schedule (WHO-DAS). Detailed data on how the intervention is delivered, for example, number of young people seen, how many sessions they attended, will be collected, including in-depth interviews with implementing agents, young people and clinic staff to assess acceptability and sustainability of delivering the intervention.The results of the study will be used to refine the existing Friendship Bench programme to include a sustainable and effective adolescent package to complement the existing programme for adults. This will be done collectively with the City Health Departments and the Ministry of Health who are already involved in the scaling-up of the intervention in adults. We anticipate that these results will be generalizable beyond the immediate research setting, as the Friendship Bench is scaled-up across Zimbabwe and the region more widely.