The ADAP program began in 1999 with two psychiatrists and one psychiatric nurse teaching a newly designed depression education curriculum to 530 students in eight schools. The first version of the Adolescent Depression Knowledge Questionnaire (ADKQ) was devised and administered to the students as a measure of their knowledge about depression before and after the curriculum. Over the ensuing seven years, the program has grown significantly. To date our statistics show:
Total students taught: 10,372
Total number of schools involved: 47
Total number of participating instructors: 98
Current states/regions involved: Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, Minnesota, North Carolina, & Washington, D.C
ADAP PROGRAM PHASES
In the first year of the program, the results of before and after ADKQ tests demonstrated that teaching the curriculum in multiple sessions rather than a one-session curriculum led to greater improvement in ADKQ test scores.
In the second year, data analysis showed that students taught the full curriculum in a classroom setting had greater improvement in their ADKQ scores than students taught the full curriculum in an assembly setting.
In the third year, 2001-2002, ADAP focused on increasing the number of students receiving the ADAP curriculum and began teaching the curriculum in a large public school district in Maryland.
Years four through six focused on finalizing the curriculum and the ADKQ and on developing a training program to train psychiatric clinicians and nursing and medical students to teach the ADAP curriculum.
The past two years have involved piloting the program outside of Maryland and developing a training program for school-based personnel. Our current focus is to continue with national expansion and to begin conducting research to explore the outcomes of adolescent depression education.
