Effect of a dialectical behavioural therapy-based intervention on the developmental assets of grade 9 and 10 youths: Results of a randomized trial
Youths’ mental health is a growing concern in New Brunswick as in the rest of Canada. Faced with this observation, the governments of Canada and New Brunswick wish for a greater involvement of schools in prevention and detection efforts. To do this, schools would notably play a role in the development of protective factors that foster resilience in youth. The Search Institute’s developmental assets framework provides a target for interventions by suggesting a list of internal and external resources that youth should be able to draw on to face adversity. Dialectic behavioural therapy (DBT) constitutes one form of intervention that aims at developing individuals’ capabilities to deal with adversity. This paper presents results from a randomized trial that examined the effect of a DBT-based intervention on the progression of developmental assets. The intervention consisted in six weekly sessions of 70 minutes during which social and emotional competency training was offered to groups of 25 to 30 pupils. There were 146 study participants, grade 9 and 10, from two francophone schools in New Brunswick. Pupils were randomly assigned to one of three groups (experimental, placebo and control) and completed the French version of the Developmental Assets Profile before the intervention as well as one month after. Results suggest a positive effect of the intervention on four types of assets (support, empowerment, boundaries and expectations, and commitment to learning), especially for pupils with the lowest developmental asset scores at baseline. Practical implications of these findings and limitations to the study are discussed.