ALIVE: Improving Adolescent mentaL health by reducing the Impact of poVErty

Most of the world's adolescents live in low and middle-income countries (LMIC), where poverty levels are high, and there are few effective interventions to prevent depression and anxiety. Poverty influences adolescent depression and anxiety both directly, and through its effect on self-regulation. We propose to develop and conduct a small pilot evaluation of an intervention that both addresses poverty and strengthens self-regulation among adolescents living in urban poverty in Colombia, Nepal and South Africa. We aim to eventually test whether the anti-poverty component or the self-regulation component, or both combined are most effective in preventing adolescent depression and anxiety in LMIC. We also propose to adapt and validate key measurement instruments, to assess how the intervention is delivered, how much it costs, the way in which it works and its effect. Our pilot evaluation will allow us to test all the procedures required for a future large randomised controlled trial.