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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Psychol.
Sec. Positive Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1528504
This article is part of the Research Topic The Psychology of Hope View all 8 articles

A Hope Intervention for Adolescents: A Randomized, Controlled Trial Delivered by Paraprofessionals

Provisionally accepted
Anthony Scioli Anthony Scioli 1*Nathan Macpherson Nathan Macpherson 1Rachel Murphy Rachel Murphy 1Tyler Gooding Tyler Gooding 1Micah Love Micah Love 1Kathleen D. Lyons Kathleen D. Lyons 2Anna M Adachi-Mejia Anna M Adachi-Mejia 3
  • 1 Keene State College, Keene, United States
  • 2 Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center, Lebanon, New Hampshire, United States
  • 3 Adachi Labs, LLC, Norwich, VT, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    A workshop for adolescents was derived from an interdisciplinary model of hope. The workshop was created for delivery by professionals or lay helpers and is structured around the needs for attachment, survival, mastery, and spirituality. Adolescents, 13 to 17 years of age, received a five-week group intervention led by pairs of advanced psychology students. Hope, depression, anxiety, coping, and self-acceptance were assessed before and after the intervention.A delayed-waitlist control group, matched for age, received identical outcome measures, also five-weeks apart. Group membership was randomly assigned. More than three-quarters of the participants found the more left-brain writing exercises helpful, and nearly eighty-five percent rated the more right-brain reflections and meditative exercises favorably. Significant increases in hope as well as greater utilization of social coping methods and self-acceptance were found for the treatment group but not controls. Group participants (but not controls) also reported a significant reduction in depression. Anxiety levels were not impacted. Secondary analyses suggested that participant engagement and SES may play a role in moderating the efficacy of this intervention. This relatively low-cost intervention offers new hope for counteracting the rising global epidemic of youth despair.

    Keywords: hope, emotion, adolescence, spirituality, Group workshop

    Received: 14 Nov 2024; Accepted: 03 Feb 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Scioli, Macpherson, Murphy, Gooding, Love, Lyons and Adachi-Mejia. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Anthony Scioli, Keene State College, Keene, United States

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.