What the science says

Home/Young People/What the science says

What we already know about Single Session Interventions for youth mental health

Summary

  • Two digital self-help SSIs have been especially well tested in young people in the USA. They have been found to increase hope and sense of control, and reduce depression symptoms like low mood several months later.
  • Initial small studies in the UK have found that young people like the SSIs and find them useful, but we need more robust tests.

Single Session Interventions (SSIs) are quick, one-time sessions that can help you with mental health.

Some of these, including the ones we are testing, don’t need a therapist; you can do them on your own, whenever you want, and from any device with internet. You don’t have to talk to anyone about doing an SSI if you don’t want to.

The SSIs we are testing were developed by clinical psychologists in the USA. We do not and have never asked users to pay to access the SSIs and our goal is to make them freely available for all young people to use.

The SSIs pack important tips and tricks from psychological therapy into one quick session. This means that by doing an SSI, you can learn a key message from a proven treatment.

Teenage girl with laptop

For young people, SSIs are great because they avoid common problems of multi-session psychological treatment like stigma, long waiting lists, and inconvenient appointment times. You can use them whenever you need, without the hassle of regular sessions.

Growing evidence shows that digital self-help SSIs are acceptable, safe and effective, for reducing depression symptoms like low mood, and improving functioning for young people.

The Lab for Scalable Mental Health, who have developed some of the best-evaluated SSIs, have tested them in several trials. In two of these trials, called Project Y.E.S., which stands for Youth Empowerment and Support, they found that offering young people age 11-18 the choice of one of three SSIs resulted in positive feedback from users, who also noticed that straight after completing their chosen SSI, they felt more hopeful and more in control of their lives.

Growing evidence shows that digital self-help SSIs are acceptable, safe and effective, for reducing depression symptoms like low mood, and improving functioning for young people.

The Lab for Scalable Mental Health, who have developed some of the best-evaluated SSIs, have tested these in several trials. In two of these trials, called Project Y.E.S., which stands for Youth Empowerment and Support, they found that offering young people age 11-18 the choice of one of three SSIs resulted in positive feedback from users, who also noticed that straight after completing their chosen SSI, they felt more hopeful and more in control of their lives.

The most rigorous way to test whether a treatment works is through a randomised controlled trial (RCT). An RCT is an experiment where people are randomly allocated to either the treatment being tested, or to a comparison treatment to see how well each group do.

Two SSIs from the Lab for Scalable Mental Health, Project Personality and Project A.B.C., have undergone RCTs with young people in the USA.  One RCT found that both these SSIs were effective at reducing depression symptoms three months later in a large sample (almost 2500!) of 13-16 year-olds during the pandemic. Young people from minority groups who don’t always access traditional clinic based services seem to particularly sign up to and benefit from SSIs.

In the UK, there have been four studies that we know of on digital self-help SSIs.

One pilot study taught 80 young people age 16-18 about growth mindset and compassion principles using a video. It was delivered in schools, and found to be acceptable and useful.

A second study then compared how young people who got this SSI straight away did compared to those who had to wait to access it.  

Another pilot study of a UK version of Project Personality was done at Great Ormond Street Hospital with a small number (32) 8 to 17 year olds with physical and mental health issues. Again, this study found the SSI was acceptable, and useful. A larger RCT of Project Personality has been completed but not yet published.

References

  • Ball, J., Thompson, Z., Meiser-Stedman, R., & Chiu, K. (2024). Self-Administered Single Session Interventions for Mental Health in Young People: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Available at SSRN 4856261.
  • Baumel, A., Muench, F., Edan, S., & Kane, J. M. (2019). Objective user engagement with mental health apps: systematic search and panel-based usage analysis. Journal of medical Internet research, 21(9), e14567.
  • Boucher, E. M., & Raiker, J. S. (2024). Engagement and retention in digital mental health interventions: a narrative review. BMC Digital Health, 2(1), 52.
  • Ching, B. C., Bennett, S. D., Morant, N., Heyman, I., Schleider, J. L., Fifield, K., . . . Shafran, R. Growth mindset in young people awaiting treatment in a paediatric mental health service: A mixed methods pilot of a digital single-session intervention. Clin Child Psychol Psychiatry, 0(0), 13591045221105193. https://doi.org/10.1177/13591045221105193
  • Cohen, K. A., Smith, A. C., & Schleider, J. L. (2024). Integrating Single-Session Interventions into Existing Care Systems: Conceptualizing Implementation Through the RE-AIM Framework. Advances in Psychiatry and Behavioral Health, 4(1), 81-89. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ypsc.2024.04.006
  • Loades, M. E., & Schleider, J. L. (2023). Technology Matters: Online, self‐help single session interventions could expand current provision, improving early access to help for young people with depression symptoms, including minority groups. Child Adolesc Ment Health.
  • Perkins, A. M., Bowers, G., Cassidy, J., Meiser-Stedman, R., & Pass, L. (2021). An enhanced psychological mindset intervention to promote adolescent wellbeing within educational settings: A feasibility randomized controlled trial. J Clin Psychol, 77(4), 946-967. https://doi.org/10.1002/jclp.23104
  • Radez, J., Reardon, T., Creswell, C., Lawrence, P. J., Evdoka-Burton, G., & Waite, P. (2021). Why do children and adolescents (not) seek and access professional help for their mental health problems? A systematic review of quantitative and qualitative studies. Eur Child Adolesc Psychiatry, 30(2), 183-211. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00787-019-01469-4
  • Schleider, J. L., Dobias, M., Sung, J., Mumper, E., & Mullarkey, M. C. (2020). Acceptability and Utility of an Open-Access, Online Single-Session Intervention Platform for Adolescent Mental Health. JMIR Ment Health, 7(6), e20513. https://doi.org/10.2196/20513
  • Schleider, J. L., Dobias, M. L., Mullarkey, M. C., & Ollendick, T. (2020). Retiring, Rethinking, and Reconstructing the Norm of Once-Weekly Psychotherapy. Adm Policy Ment Health. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10488-020-01090-7
  • Schleider, J. L., Mullarkey, M. C., Fox, K. R., Dobias, M. L., Shroff, A., Hart, E. A., & Roulston, C. A. (2021). A randomized trial of online single-session interventions for adolescent depression during COVID-19. Nat Hum Behav. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-021-01235-0
  • Schleider, J. L., & Weisz, J. R. (2017). Little Treatments, Promising Effects? Meta-Analysis of Single-Session Interventions for Youth Psychiatric Problems. J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry, 56(2), 107-115. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaac.2016.11.007
  • Schleider, J. L., Zapata, J. P., Rapoport, A., Wescott, A., Ghosh, A., Kaveladze, B., . . . Ahuvia, I. (2025). Single-session interventions for mental health problems and service engagement: umbrella review of systematic reviews and meta-analyses. Annual review of clinical psychology, 21. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-clinpsy-081423-025033
  • Shroff, A., Roulston, C., Fassler, J., Dierschke, N. A., Todd, J. S. P., Ríos-Herrera, Á., . . . Schleider, J. L. (2023). A Digital Single-Session Intervention Platform for Youth Mental Health: Cultural Adaptation, Evaluation, and Dissemination. JMIR Ment Health, 10, e43062. https://doi.org/10.2196/43062

Find out more about SSIs and how they work.

Back to Top