Previously submitted to: JMIR mHealth and uHealth (no longer under consideration since Dec 29, 2021)
Date Submitted: Jul 27, 2020
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Supporting caregivers of adolescents with mental health disorders using internet-based or mobile application interventions: a systematic review
ABSTRACT
Background:
The number of adolescents with mental health issues has increased worldwide, which not only affects adolescents themselves but also their families, especially, their primary caregivers (mostly parents). Family caregivers are a lifelong resource in a child’s life, and play a crucial role in supporting and helping their children in their recovery journey, and provide unpaid care, mostly in the community, Yet they are the most unsupported of all groups of caregivers. With growing recognition of web-based or mobile application interventions playing a promising role in delivering programs in mental health related areas, caregivers of adolescents with mental health issues can benefit from the technologies that provide support for them.
Objective:
In this systematic review, we aimed to review the current existing literature on online-based programs or mobile applications that support caregivers of adolescents with mental health disorders.
Methods:
A systematic search of the literature using the PRISMA guideline was conducted on seven databases to identify any peer-reviewed articles published in English from 2009 to March 2019. The studies were screened, extracted, and the quality of the selected studies was appraised using the McMaster Critical Review.
Results:
This review revealed a paucity of studies that met the inclusion criteria. All five selected articles focus on evaluating online-based or mobile app interventions including online moderated social therapy, online parenting intervention program, online chat support groups, and smartphone application for suicidal adolescents and their parents. Acceptability, usability, and feasibility of the online-based or smartphone app interventions were confirmed in the studies while findings of improving mental health and well-being in the caregivers and adolescents were inconclusive.
Conclusions:
With increased interests in web-based or mobile app interventions used in mental health related areas and its known benefits, more studies on supporting the caregivers using technologies are required.
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