Dose Response Effects of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy in a Rural School Mental Health Program

School mental health (SMH) programs have been shown to be effective in providing empirically-based treatment to youth. However, a limitation of SMH programs is that they entail holiday breaks and typically do not operate over the summer, along with the fact that they often require pulling students from instruction time for therapy. These time limitations suggest that treatment needs to be expeditious and potent. Although researchers have investigated dose response for adults, no studies were located that addressed the question of dose response in SMH programs. The purpose of the present study was to address this gap in the literature by evaluating the dose response to SMH treatment in a sample of adolescents.Results showed an average treatment response of a 26.81-point decrease in YOQ- 30 score across 14 sessions of CBT. Further, adolescents exhibited reliable change in YOQ-30 score within an average of 2.91 sessions. Finally, it was found that baseline scores on the Depression and Hyperactivity subscales of the BASC-2, along with total YOQ-30 score, reliably predicted treatment response. These findings not only advance our understanding of dose response to CBT in SMH settings, but they create opportunities to better inform, individualize, and prescribe effective treatment strategies in similar contexts.