David Heyne, PhD

The @school project concentrates upon the effectiveness of interventions for young people who find it hard to attend school regularly. Difficulty attending school is often associated with anxiety and sometimes with depression, as well as with specific challenges at school and/or home. It is important to have effective and efficient interventions to help troubled young people return to a normal developmental pathway – a path along which they can succeed academically and do well socially and emotionally.

Currently we provide and evaluate two forms of intervention for school refusal, including cognitive and behavioural therapy (CBT) and education and support therapy (EST). Our integrated approach to intervention comprises work with the young person and their parents, and consultation to school staff. The focus is upon older school-refusing children and adolescents (10 to 17 years) because previous treatments were not always found to be effective with this group. Delivery and evaluation of the interventions are conducted in collaboration with the Curium Academic Centre for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

Key research questions include: (i) for whom CBT works best and for whom EST works best; and (ii) the processes via which the interventions lead to reductions in young people’s emotional distress and increases in their school attendance. To help answer these questions, the @school team has developed and evaluated pivotal instruments (e.g., measures of psychosocial development, young people’s thinking styles, parental self-efficacy, and the non-specific aspects of treatment).

This is the first study on the treatment of school refusal to systematically investigate, a priori, moderators and mediators of outcome, and the most comprehensive examination of developmental factors in relation to treatment for young people.

Specific projects

• Cognitive risk factors of school refusal in adolescence: How do the interventions work, and for whom do they work?
• Developmental Influences on the Process and Outcomes of CBT: Do cognitive and psychosocial developmental factors affect treatment delivery and outcome?
• Conducting a functional analysis of school refusal: How reliable and valid are the Dutch versions of the SRAS-P? 
• Measuring self-efficacy among school refusers and their parents: How reliable and valid are the SEQ-SS and the SEQ-RSAP?