Objective: African American female adolescents face disparities compared with White peers in the interrelated areas of mental health symptoms and sexually transmitted infection (STI) acquisition. IMARA (Informed, Motivated, Aware and Responsible about AIDS) is a group-based mother-daughter intervention addressing these factors among African American teenagers. Previous work demonstrated that female adolescents who received IMARA were 43% less likely than controls to evidence a new STI at 1 year. This report aimed to provide the 1st test of IMARA on externalizing and internalizing symptoms and an exploratory analysis of whether symptom improvements were associated with the protective effect of treatment against future STIs.
Method: Female African Americans aged 14-18 years (M = 16; N = 199) were randomly assigned to IMARA or a health promotion control group matched for time and structure. They completed the Youth Self-Report of externalizing and internalizing symptoms at baseline and at 6 and 12 months and were tested for STIs at baseline and 12 months; positive cases were treated. Hierarchical linear modeling tested symptom change over time, including the moderating effects of baseline symptoms.
Results: Among participants who entered with high versus lower externalizing symptoms, those who received IMARA showed a slightly greater decrease in externalizing scores relative to the control (p = .035). For these youth, symptom improvements appeared to be associated with IMARA's protective effect against new STIs. Treatment was not associated with internalizing symptom change (p > .05).
Conclusion: IMARA shows promise in modestly reducing self-reported externalizing symptoms, although only for participants with high scores at baseline. The possibility that externalizing symptom improvement is linked with reduced STI acquisition warrants future examination. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).