Toril Sørheim Nilsen

• Psychological treatment
• Mental health in children and adolescents
• Mechanisms of change
• Problematic school absenteeism
• Feedback informed treatment (FIT)

Research interests: I am an associate professor and a specialist in clinical psychology for children and adolescents. My main research interests are clinical studies focusing on how to improve mental health services and psychological treatment for children and adolescents, and their families. Related to this broad topic is my interest in the investigation of mechanisms of change in psychosocial treatments, in order to improve the understanding of what works for whom in psychological treatments.

My main research projects are currently:

The Back 2 School (B2S) program for problematic school absenteeism in Norway. A pilot study: The ambition of the present study is to adapt a new and promising intervention in Norway, aiming to improve the help offered to children, youth and families struggling with problematic school absenteeism. The Back2School (B2S) program is a modular trans-diagnostic cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) intervention for increasing school attendance and decreasing psychological problems among youths with problematic school absenteeism. A randomized controlled treatment study, comparing the effects of the B2S program with treatment as usual have been conducted in Aarhus, Denmark (Lomholt et al., 2020; Thastum et al., 2019). The Norwegian study is developed in collaboration with Project manager Mikael Thastum at the University of Aarhus, Denmark.

The planned pilot study is a collaboration between researchers at all the four Regional Centre for Child and Youth Mental Health and Child Welfare (RKBU North, West, Middle and RBUP South/East), and at the University of Bergen, Stavanger, NTNU, UiT and the University of Aarhus, Denmark. In the pilot study, the B2S program will be tested and evaluated in several municipalities in all regions in Norway. Data for the pilot study will be collected during the school terms of 2022-23. The goal of the pilot study is to develop a larger-scale intervention study in Norway.

The clinical utility of using feedback informed treatment (FIT) in child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS): The study will be conducted within six outpatient CAMHS at the University Hospital of North Norway. By means of a mixed-methods approach, research questions focus on the validity of the Outcome rating scale (ORS) within Feedback Informed Treatment (FIT), the evaluation of change and mechanisms of change when using FIT, and patients and therapists’ experiences of how systematic feedback is utilized in clinical practice.

The CAMHS clinic at the University Hospital of North Norway is responsible for the project. I am the main supervisor for Phd-candidate, Linda Svorken, who will do her Phd -project on this study.

Contact information:

toril.nilsen@uit.no,

https://uit.no/ansatte/person?p_document_id=635061