SOSteniamoci: Stakeholders' Survey

Informal Caregivers

Informal care is defined as the unpaid care provided to an older, frail, or ill person, by a person such as a spouse, a parent, a child, another relative, a neighbor, or a friend. This phenomenon may lead to stress, burden, and decreased informal caregivers' quality of life. Since lack of time, distance from services, and financial strains make the provision of psychological interventions to informal caregivers often challenging, Internet-based (self-help) programs might represent a viable solution to promote their emotional well-being. Still, despite the proven benefits of internet-based intervention, no available programs for informal caregivers are available for the Italian population. Nevertheless, planning and developing an online intervention, involving possible stakeholders (caregivers), might facilitate the understanding and dissemination of, willingness to use, and success of the future intervention. Thus, the goal of the current study is to assess Italian stakeholders' knowledge about, awareness of, attitudes towards, willingness to participate and use, and expected barriers to internet-based interventions.

The present study assessed the knowledge and awareness, attitudes, willingness to participate in, and expected barriers towards using Internet-based interventions to alleviate caregivers' burden in a sample of Italian caregivers and clinicians. To this aim, an online stakeholders' survey was conducted in Italy among clinicians and informal caregivers, using a snowballing sampling technique. Participants were asked to fill in the informed consent and complete the online survey as a clinician, a caregiver, or both. Data were monitored daily. Descriptive statistics and Pearson correlation analysis were used for data analysis.

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Italy