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An online program with individualized vs automated support for significant others of depressed individuals – study protocol of a randomized controlled trial
BACKGROUND: Due to budget restrictions in mental health care, non-professional caregivers are increasingly burdened with the emotional and practical care for their depressed relatives. However, informal family caregiving is mostly a stressful role with negative consequences on the physical and menta...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BioMed Central
2022
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9331487/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35902851 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12888-022-04035-6 |
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author | Schramm, Elisabeth Breuninger, Christoph Zehender, Nadine Hegerl, Ulrich Elsner, Anne Maun, Andy Schmölz, Marina Roick, Christiane Grodd, Marlon Graf, Erika |
author_facet | Schramm, Elisabeth Breuninger, Christoph Zehender, Nadine Hegerl, Ulrich Elsner, Anne Maun, Andy Schmölz, Marina Roick, Christiane Grodd, Marlon Graf, Erika |
author_sort | Schramm, Elisabeth |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: Due to budget restrictions in mental health care, non-professional caregivers are increasingly burdened with the emotional and practical care for their depressed relatives. However, informal family caregiving is mostly a stressful role with negative consequences on the physical and mental health of the caretakers to the extent that they have an elevated risk of experiencing psychiatric disorders themselves. While psychoeducation for relatives of depressed individuals showed positive results both in terms of the caretakers’ strain and the depressive symptoms of the affected person, there are major barriers to participate in presence in those programs. Digital programs might be a viable alternative. We found no empirically evaluated digital program available for informal caregivers of depressed patients. METHODS: An online program for relatives of depressed individuals has been developed including four interactive modules on 1) psychoeducation, 2) how to strengthen the relationship with the depressed person, 3) how to deal with the depressive symptoms of the patient, and 4) find the right balance between caring for the depressed person and self-care. We investigate if this self-help program is more effective when used with individualized versus automated e-mail support, and if both supported conditions are more effective than treatment-as-usual (TAU in form of written information material) in terms of the risk of mental diseases in caregivers. The primary outcome is the reduction of the caregiver’s nonspecific mental distress as measured by the change of the Kessler Psychological Distress Scale score from baseline to four weeks after randomization. Caregivers (n = 500:500:250) will be randomized to one of the three conditions. DISCUSSION: Psychological support for caregivers of individuals with mental disorders such as depression should be offered as part of integrated services. There is a huge potential to develop and implement interactive online approaches to support informal caregivers of patients with depression to function in their multiple roles and to help them to remain healthy. TRIAL REGISTRATION: DRKS, DRKS00025241. Registered 5 Mai 2021. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12888-022-04035-6. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-9331487 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2022 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-93314872022-07-29 An online program with individualized vs automated support for significant others of depressed individuals – study protocol of a randomized controlled trial Schramm, Elisabeth Breuninger, Christoph Zehender, Nadine Hegerl, Ulrich Elsner, Anne Maun, Andy Schmölz, Marina Roick, Christiane Grodd, Marlon Graf, Erika BMC Psychiatry Study Protocol BACKGROUND: Due to budget restrictions in mental health care, non-professional caregivers are increasingly burdened with the emotional and practical care for their depressed relatives. However, informal family caregiving is mostly a stressful role with negative consequences on the physical and mental health of the caretakers to the extent that they have an elevated risk of experiencing psychiatric disorders themselves. While psychoeducation for relatives of depressed individuals showed positive results both in terms of the caretakers’ strain and the depressive symptoms of the affected person, there are major barriers to participate in presence in those programs. Digital programs might be a viable alternative. We found no empirically evaluated digital program available for informal caregivers of depressed patients. METHODS: An online program for relatives of depressed individuals has been developed including four interactive modules on 1) psychoeducation, 2) how to strengthen the relationship with the depressed person, 3) how to deal with the depressive symptoms of the patient, and 4) find the right balance between caring for the depressed person and self-care. We investigate if this self-help program is more effective when used with individualized versus automated e-mail support, and if both supported conditions are more effective than treatment-as-usual (TAU in form of written information material) in terms of the risk of mental diseases in caregivers. The primary outcome is the reduction of the caregiver’s nonspecific mental distress as measured by the change of the Kessler Psychological Distress Scale score from baseline to four weeks after randomization. Caregivers (n = 500:500:250) will be randomized to one of the three conditions. DISCUSSION: Psychological support for caregivers of individuals with mental disorders such as depression should be offered as part of integrated services. There is a huge potential to develop and implement interactive online approaches to support informal caregivers of patients with depression to function in their multiple roles and to help them to remain healthy. TRIAL REGISTRATION: DRKS, DRKS00025241. Registered 5 Mai 2021. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12888-022-04035-6. BioMed Central 2022-07-28 /pmc/articles/PMC9331487/ /pubmed/35902851 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12888-022-04035-6 Text en © The Author(s) 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data. |
spellingShingle | Study Protocol Schramm, Elisabeth Breuninger, Christoph Zehender, Nadine Hegerl, Ulrich Elsner, Anne Maun, Andy Schmölz, Marina Roick, Christiane Grodd, Marlon Graf, Erika An online program with individualized vs automated support for significant others of depressed individuals – study protocol of a randomized controlled trial |
title | An online program with individualized vs automated support for significant others of depressed individuals – study protocol of a randomized controlled trial |
title_full | An online program with individualized vs automated support for significant others of depressed individuals – study protocol of a randomized controlled trial |
title_fullStr | An online program with individualized vs automated support for significant others of depressed individuals – study protocol of a randomized controlled trial |
title_full_unstemmed | An online program with individualized vs automated support for significant others of depressed individuals – study protocol of a randomized controlled trial |
title_short | An online program with individualized vs automated support for significant others of depressed individuals – study protocol of a randomized controlled trial |
title_sort | online program with individualized vs automated support for significant others of depressed individuals – study protocol of a randomized controlled trial |
topic | Study Protocol |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9331487/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35902851 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12888-022-04035-6 |
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