Assessing the feasibility and acceptability of Carer_MindOnLine: a mindfulness program for carers of people living with cancer

The intervention is a 9-week online mindfulness program, called Carer_MindOnLine, which comprises three main components: (1) an educational component to increase participants' knowledge about the science and practice of mindfulness and how it can benefit them in everyday life; (2) a formal mindfulness meditation practice to improve awareness and emotion regulation; and (3) an informal practice to teach participants how to bring mindfulness to daily activities. Once enrolled, participants can access the program by logging into the study website. This intervention is an adaptation of the MindOnLine program for people with cancer (ANZCTR registration number 12620000645954). Mindfulness education will be delivered using videos and associated video scripts. A new theme is introduced each week with a new meditation practice, which participants will be encouraged to practice every day. Themes include: introduction, reducing stress, relating to emotions, self-compassion, communicating mindfully, living mindfully, reducing worry, reducing worries mindfully and maintaining mindfulness. These videos were originally created for the MindOnLine program, with minor language changes to suit the carer audience. Each video is approximately 5-10 minutes in length. At the end of each week, participants will receive an email with a link to the video introducing the theme for the upcoming week. The script for the videos will be available for downloading and printing in a pdf format so that participants can keep a copy for later reference. At the end of each video, participants will be reminded by email to continue with their daily meditation practice (formal practice) and given specific informal practice during their daily activities. Examples of informal practice include: Week 1 – “These weeks, notice times you are aware; time you are fully engaged with what you are doing or giving your full attention to someone. And notice times you are not paying attention to the moment you are in; when you are distracted. See if you can notice the difference between these two modes of being.”; Week 2 – “notice when you are activating the stress response. Try to notice those signs in your body that tell you when you are getting stressed. These might be things like feeling butterflies in your stomach, muscle tension, increased heart rate, breathing higher in the chest or feeling irritable and short tempered”. To support the informal practice, participants will have the opportunity to keep a self-reflection journal, which will only be accessible to the participant. The website contains a section addressing common questions about meditation, which can be accessed at any time throughout the course of the program. Participants will be encouraged to practice mindfulness (formally and informally) daily. Participants will have access to a variety of guided mindfulness meditations audios. The guided meditations last for approximately 5-10 minutes. Access and engagement with the various aspects of the Carer_MindOnLine program (videos, guided meditations, self-reflection journaling) will be tracked using Google Analytics. Additionally, adherence to the mindfulness meditations will be measured by self-report. At the end of the 9-week program participants will be asked how often they engaged with informal mindfulness practices (including self-reflection journaling) and on average how long (in hour or minutes) they meditated each week.