Symposia
Program / Treatment Design
Jenna Sung, M.A.
PhD Student
Stony Brook University
Queens, New York
Jessica Schleider, Ph.D. (she/her/hers)
Assistant Professor
Stony Brook University
Stony Brook, New York
Background. Outpatient mental health clinics across the country are struggling to meet acute demand for mental health services, resulting in months-long waitlists for people seeking care. Providing evidence-based, single-session interventions to treatment-seeking individuals while they are waiting for treatment may help address this crisis in an efficient, sustainable manner. One such intervention, the Single-Session Consultation (SSC), was found to be an effective, acceptable, and feasible low-intensity treatment option when delivered as a face-to-face intervention to people on waitlists for therapy. The current study extended this initial trial by evaluating the SSC delivered via telehealth during the COVID-19 pandemic to individuals waiting to access mental health care.
Methods. Participants (N = 64) on an outpatient clinic’s waitlist for outpatient therapy services were offered the telehealth-SSC. Participants who accepted the invitation completed self-report questionnaires at baseline, immediately post-intervention, and at two-week follow-up. Participants were 14 to 72 years old (M = 26.88, SD = 11.91), 57.69% female, and identified as white (59.62%), Asian (15.38%), Hispanic or Latino/a (11.54%), Black (5.77%), or more than one race (7.69%). As a treatment-seeking sample, participants endorsed moderate levels of anxiety and depression at baseline. Pre-registration of all methods and research questions are available on [Masked for Review].
Results. Of the 147 people offered an SSC, 95 (64.63%) accepted the invitation, 74 (77.89%) scheduled with a clinician, and 65 (87.84%) attended the session, which surpasses the pre-registered benchmarks of feasibility. SSC recipients saw pre-to-post intervention improvements in hopelessness (dz = 1.04, p</em> < .001) and readiness for change (dz= -0.87, p</em> < .001). From baseline to 2-week follow-up, psychological symptoms non-significantly decreased (dz= .20 for depression, dz= .32 for anxiety) in the subset who completed the follow-up survey (46%). Participants rated telehealth-SSC sessions as highly acceptable and developed a close therapeutic alliance (M = 6.13, SD = 0.76) comparable to alliance ratings observed in longer-term, in-person psychotherapy trials.
Conclusions. The SSC was acceptable, feasible, and effective in the short term when delivered via teletherapy, suggesting its utility as a low-intensity, scalable intervention for people on waiting lists for outpatient mental health care.