Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Human Factors
Date Submitted: Jul 20, 2025
Date Accepted: Feb 17, 2026
A qualitative study exploring e-mental health intervention preferences among informal caregivers of adults living with chronic kidney disease
ABSTRACT
Background:
Informal caregivers of people living with chronic kidney disease commonly experience mental health difficulties. However, there is currently limited access to scalable psychological interventions such as those utilising e-mental health platforms. Furthermore, there is an absence of such interventions tailored for this group of caregivers, which may limit acceptability.
Objective:
To inform future e-mental health intervention development, this study aimed to explore preferences for e-mental health interventions among informal caregivers of people living with chronic kidney disease.
Methods:
A total of 13 informal caregivers of people living with chronic kidney disease participated in semi-structured interviews. Eligible informal caregivers lived in the United Kingdom and were recruited via non-profit organizations and social media advertisements. Semi-structured interviews followed a topic guide exploring caregivers’ e-mental health intervention preferences. Data were analyzed using manifest content analysis.
Results:
Four categories and thirteen sub-categories were generated: design preferences illustrates key intervention design features that were important to caregivers, e.g., involving caregivers and other stakeholder in the design process, content preferences describes the information caregivers valued in an intervention, e.g., information about chronic kidney disease and resources to support caregivers, support preferences reflects the characteristics of support caregivers preferred if support was available as part of the intervention, e.g., peer support and providing support that accommodates individual preferences, and dissemination preferences describes methods caregivers recommended to promote intervention uptake, e.g., engaging communication strategies and trusted and accessible sources of information.
Conclusions:
Caregivers identified a number of e-mental health intervention design and delivery preferences that should be considered when developing e-mental health interventions for caregivers of people living with chronic kidney disease. To ensure such interventions are acceptable, feasible, and relevant, co-design approaches should be adopted during the intervention development process.
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