Thanks for this Gregory, I think it’s an important result and have updated my views. I’m not sure why HLI were so optimistic about this. I have a few comments here.
This study was performed on adolescents, which is not the core group of women that Strong Minds and other group IPT programs treat. This study might update me slightly negatively against the effectof their core programming with groups of older women but not by much.
As The study said, “this marked the first time SMU (i) delivered therapy to out-of-school
adolescent females, (ii) used youth mentors, and (iii) delivered therapy through a partner
organization.”
This result then doesn’t surprise me as (high uncertainty) I think it’s generally harder to move the needle with adolescent mental health than with adults.
The therapy still worked, even though the effect sizes were much smaller than other studies and were not cost effective.
As you’ve said before, f this kind of truly independent research was done on a lot of interventions, the results might not look nearly as good as the original studies.
I think Strongminds should probably stop their adolescent programs based on this study. Why keep doing it, when your work with adult women currently seems far more cost effective?
Even with the Covid caveat, I’m stunned at the null/negative effect of the cash transfer arm. Interesting stuff and not sure what to make of it.
I would still love a similar independent study on the regular group IPT programs with older women, and these RCTs should be pretty cheap on the scale of things, I doubt we’ll get that though as it will probably seen as being too similar and not interesting enough for researchers which is fair enough.
Thanks for this Gregory, I think it’s an important result and have updated my views. I’m not sure why HLI were so optimistic about this. I have a few comments here.
This study was performed on adolescents, which is not the core group of women that Strong Minds and other group IPT programs treat. This study might update me slightly negatively against the effectof their core programming with groups of older women but not by much.
As The study said, “this marked the first time SMU (i) delivered therapy to out-of-school adolescent females, (ii) used youth mentors, and (iii) delivered therapy through a partner organization.”
This result then doesn’t surprise me as (high uncertainty) I think it’s generally harder to move the needle with adolescent mental health than with adults.
The therapy still worked, even though the effect sizes were much smaller than other studies and were not cost effective.
As you’ve said before, f this kind of truly independent research was done on a lot of interventions, the results might not look nearly as good as the original studies.
I think Strongminds should probably stop their adolescent programs based on this study. Why keep doing it, when your work with adult women currently seems far more cost effective?
Even with the Covid caveat, I’m stunned at the null/negative effect of the cash transfer arm. Interesting stuff and not sure what to make of it.
I would still love a similar independent study on the regular group IPT programs with older women, and these RCTs should be pretty cheap on the scale of things, I doubt we’ll get that though as it will probably seen as being too similar and not interesting enough for researchers which is fair enough.