Abstract
Background: This paper presents the rationale and study protocol for a pragmatic controlled effectiveness trial of Truce, a prevention-based selective intervention targeting the significant mental health needs of young people who have a parent with cancer. Methods/Design: Truce is a seven week, facilitated, face-to-face group program. The design is a 2 groups (intervention vs control) x 3(pre-treatment vs post-treatment vs 2 month follow-up) repeated measures. Allocation to groups will be dependent upon recruitment; when groups have sufficient numbers, they will be assigned to the intervention condition, but participants recruited without a viable group will be assigned to the wait-list control condition. Eligible participants are young people aged 14 to 22 years who have a parent diagnosed with cancer within the last 5 years. Wait-list controls are offered the opportunity to participate in the program once they have completed their follow-up questionnaires. The target sample size is 65 participants in each condition. The primary hypothesis is that participants in the intervention will show significant reductions in distress and increases in psychological well-being relative to participants in the wait-list control group, and these effects will continue through two-month follow-up. Mixed-models analysis of variance will be used to measure differences between the two conditions. Secondary analyses will focus on variables which may relate to the effectiveness of the intervention: ACT-related concepts of experiential avoidance and mindfulness, family functioning, unmet needs and demographic variables. We will also assess program fidelity and satisfaction. Discussion: The development and evaluation of a manualised intervention for young people with a parent with cancer responds to a gap in the provision of empirically-based psychological support for this vulnerable group.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 31 |
| Number of pages | 10 |
| Journal | BMC Psychology |
| Volume | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2015 |
Open Access - Access Right Statement
© 2015 Patterson et al. Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.Keywords
- adolescents
- cancer
- intervention
- mental health
- oncology
- parent
- teenagers
