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Symposia

Technology/Digital Health

Bridging Gaps in Access to Care: Designing, Adapting, Testing, and Disseminating Single-Session Interventions for Young People

5 - (SYM 11) So Many Treatments, so Little Access: Addressing the Paradox of Dissemination Challenges Through Single-session Interventions in Global Mental Health

Friday, November 21, 2025
4:13 PM - 4:30 PM CST
Location: Empire B, Level 2
Keywords: Child, Technology / Mobile Health, Treatment/ Program Design
Recommended Readings: Schleider, J. L., Zapata J.P., Rapoport, A., Wescott, A., Ghosh, A., Kaveladze, B., Szkody, E., & Ahuvia I. (in press). 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,   Peters-Corbett, A., Parke, S., Bear, H., & Clarke, T. (2024). Barriers and facilitators of implementation of evidence-based interventions in children and young people’s mental health care – a systematic review. Child and Adolescent Mental Health, 29(3), 242-265. https://doi.org/10.111/camh.12672,   Joseph, J., & Rajan, S. K. (2024). Evolution of single-session therapy: A bibliometric analysis. The American Journal of Psychotherapy, 77(2), 71-78. https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.psychotherapy.20230054,   Kazdin, A. E. (2019). Annual research review: Expanding mental health services through novel models of intervention delivery. The Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 60(4), 455-472. https://doi.org/doi.org/10.1111/jcpp.12937,  
Abstract Body

Despite the global burden of mental illness linked with trauma exposure (Koenen et al., 2017), treatment gaps range from 80% in low-and-middle-income countries to 49% in high-income countries (Stein et al., 2023). These treatment gaps are especially concerning when we consider the plethora of evidence-supported treatments (ESTs) that have been developed, investigated, tested, and replicated in scores of randomized controlled trials.  

Single-session interventions (SSIs) offer a partial solution in resolving this treatment gap. As SSIs are agnostic to treatment orientation and intentionally structured to maximize clinical benefit within one session, the structural adaptation of long-form ESTs into simpler formats such as SSIs is gaining popularity. This talk describes ways to adapt extant full-protocol ESTs into SSIs for improved dissemination to address global treatment gaps.  

This presentation will first explain the global treatment shortages along with barriers driving these care gaps. Specifically, barriers to deploying EST packages in global health settings occur at cultural, clinical, and implementations levels. Culturally, ESTs developed in Western cultural contexts do not map onto culturally grounded care models, necessitating cultural adaptation. Clinically, we need to adapt existing long-form ESTs into shorter, more cost-effective formats. In terms of implementation, we must recruit and train non-specialists in the competencies of delivering interventions with fidelity, including appropriate future care linkage. This approach (i.e., task shifting) is essential for overcoming provider shortages to deliver interventions at scale.  Next, we will present the unique opportunity of SSIs in resolving global treatment shortages with a focus on implementation strategies that have succeeded in global health settings. Finally, we will end with a case study of adapting a long-form EST into an SSI and implementing the SSI in Goa, a semi-urban location in India.