NCT06945497: SPARK

School-based Practices in Arts and Resilience for Kids

Not yet recruiting NA Last updated 25 April 2025

What this trial tests

NA trial testing Art Therapy in Anxiety in 250 participants. Not yet recruiting.

Timeline

1 September 2025

Primary endpoint
31 August 2027

31 August 2027

Quick facts

Lead sponsor	Wayne State University
Phase	NA
Status	Not yet recruiting
Study type	INTERVENTIONAL
Allocation	randomized
Design	crossover
Masking	none
Primary purpose	treatment
Enrollment	250
Start date	1 September 2025
Primary completion	31 August 2027
Estimated completion	31 August 2027
Sites	2 locations across United States

Drugs / interventions tested

• Art Therapy — full drug profile →
• Yoga/Mindfulness

Conditions studied

• Anxiety — all drugs for Anxiety →
• Posttraumatic Stress Disorder — all drugs for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder →
• Trauma — all drugs for Trauma →

Sponsor

Wayne State University

Who can join

Adults 11 to 14, any sex, with Anxiety or Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. Patients with the condition only — healthy volunteers not accepted.

Sponsor's own description

This proposal will implement and test feasibility and efficacy of school-based art therapy and yoga/mindfulness programming to reduce mental health disparities and foster resilience in youth. We will conduct a cross-over randomized trial with n=250 youth (any race/ethnicity or gender, ages 11-14) from two schools: one serving majority Black/African American students and one serving a population-representative ethnoracial demographic with 50% economically disadvantaged students. Baseline data collection will assess experiences of discrimination, negative experiences, positive experiences, and severity of posttraumatic stress, anxiety, depression, somatic symptoms, and resilience. Youth will be randomly assigned to art therapy or yoga/mindfulness for a quarter. Hour-long weekly sessions will occur during elective course times within school to bolster accessibility and generate data to inform future school-based care models for sustainability. Target schools co-developed this design with the research team. At the end of the quarter, participants will engage in post-intervention data collection, including qualitative interviews regarding their experience with the school-based programming. Participants will then cross over to the yoga/mindfulness or art therapy for the subsequent quarter, such that all participants receive both modalities. The methods described above will be repeated, including the assessments. Academic performance will be assessed throughout. We hypothesize that both modalities will be effective in reducing stress, anxiety, and depression related to discrimination, adversity, and trauma that disproportionately impacts racially and ethnically minoritized youth. We anticipate that qualitative feedback will identify points of optimization for programming and inform which students may be most responsive to what intervention(s).

Publications & conference data

No peer-reviewed publications indexed yet for this trial.