Assessing online support for informal carers of people living with depressive or anxiety symptomology: a randomised controlled feasibility study

The program aims to support carers in responding to the person living with these symptoms and promoting their own health, well-being and coping. It includes four activity modules: The caring journey, Caring for yourself and others, What matters to you, how to talk about, and Helpful strategies for everyday life. The modules, which are evidence-informed, include targeted psychoeducation, communication strategies and tips for self-care and managing stress. The modules use a mixed-media format, including short videos, infographics, highlighting some of the key information and feature 'real life' examples from carers' lived experiences. The modules also include podcasts that feature information and tips from clinicians, academics and experts in mental health. In addition, activities aim to promote mental health for carers. For example, the timeline activity requires participants to reflect on their caring experience and document how this has changed over time. Participants are encouraged to plot times when they experienced high and low periods over the past few years. Following this activity, carers are presented with a graph of their journey. The visual representation of this experience aims to show carers that while there are difficult times, there are also good times. Similarly, the values activity requires participants to choose their top three values from a list. The list includes broad categories such as ‘the greater good', ‘health’ and ‘security’. As the module progresses, participants are asked to choose which area of life they would like to put this value into practice, e.g. relationships, health, work and play. The activity is intended to support participants to live by their values and give them purpose and direction in their lives. At the end of the activity modules, there are take-home messages and resources (e.g. downloadable PDFs) for carers to use at home and in their relationship with the care recipient. The program has been developed on a web-based platform that has been used in similar online support programs. The mode of delivery was a self-paced online course. The platform that hosts the program has been used for other online programs. Participants had access to the program for a total of eight weeks. In the first week of the study period, participants in the program group had access to the first module. In the second week, participants had access to the first and second modules, and so forth for the first four weeks of the study. For the remaining four weeks of the study, participants had access to all of the modules. Each module takes approximately one hour to complete. However, participants could continue to access the modules over the eight-week period to revisit activities or download resources once completed. Following this access period and completion of the post-survey, participants from the waitlist group were granted program access. The research team collected analytics data during the program access period, i.e. metadata detailing the time spent and pages clicked within a module.