Accepted for/Published in: JMIR mHealth and uHealth
Date Submitted: Jun 23, 2020
Date Accepted: Dec 22, 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Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited.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.
TIVA - A mobile app-based intervention program for caregivers to promote positive mental health: A randomized controlled trial
ABSTRACT
Background:
Caregivers focus on the caregiver and not themselves. This can negatively affect the caregiver and the person being cared. Intervention programs can help empower caregivers of people with chronic diseases and can develop solutions to decrease the physical and psychological consequences resulting from caregiving. However, most of intervention programs for caregivers clinically tested are presential and many of the caregivers don’t have time to assist. This make important to create internet-based intervention programs and test their efficacy.
Objective:
Evaluate the effectiveness of a smartphone app-based intervention program to increase Positive Mental Health (PMH) compared.
Methods:
This study was a 3-moth long, randomized trial. A total of 152 caregivers over 18 with a minimum of 4 month of experience as caregivers were included. The caregivers were randomly divided into two equal size groups. In the intervention group, each caregiver installs a smartphone app and uses it for 28 days. This app offers them a daily activity related to the Decalogue of PMH. The level of PMH and caregiver burden was the primary outcome and the secondary outcome will be related to the satisfaction with the app by the intervention group
Results:
113 caregivers completed the study. After the 1st month intervention, although no significant mean changes were obtained between groups, the intervention group obtained higher mean change than the control group. The mean change of the burden in the control group was higher after the first month and lower in the intervention group. A significantly mean change was obtained after the third month, with an increase of 14.94 in the intervention group in the total score of the PMH questionnaire.
Conclusions:
The app-based intervention program analyzed in this study can be considered effective promoting PMH and decreasing burden and with a high range of satisfaction from the users. Evidence from this study shows that mobile phone app-based interventions program may be useful tools for increasing caregiver’s wellbeing. Interventions programs evidence assessed by a clinical trial should be a focus to promote internet-based programs in health policies. Clinical Trial: ISRCTN14818443 (date: 24/05/2019)
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