Photo by Chad McNeeley
A new social-cognitive intervention can reduce stress in parents of children undergoing hematopoietic stem cell transplant (HSCT), according to research published in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology.
In the short-term, the parent social-cognitive intervention program (P-SCIP) appeared more effective than the current best-practice psychosocial care (BPC) for reducing anxiety, depression, and traumatic distress.
However, there was not much difference between P-SCIP and BPC when it came to long-term results.
Certain subgroups of parents seemed to derive more benefit from P-SCIP than other parents.
“[P]revious research from our team and others has shown that between 20% and 66% of caregivers have elevated depression and/or anxiety prior to their child’s transplant procedure,” said study author Sharon Manne, PhD, of the Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey in New Brunswick.
“It was our aim in this study to develop and test an individual intervention program that targets cognitive and social processing strategies associated with caregiver adjustment and compare that to available best-practice psychosocial care.”
Interventions
This study included 218 biological or foster parents of HSCT recipients under age 19. The parents were assigned to receive P-SCIP or BPC.
P-SCIP required parents to view an interactive CD-ROM for five 60-minute sessions over a 2- to 3-week period following the child’s transplant.
The CD-ROM addressed parents’ worries about their child, coping with solvable concerns related to HSCT, coping with unchangeable problems related to HSCT, and communication and the importance of expressing feelings and needs.
Parents receiving BPC viewed a 1-hour video guide to pediatric HSCT and received a pamphlet covering common caregiver issues. The parents were also given the option of having someone watch their child for up to 5 hours and the use of walkie-talkies so the parents could communicate with their child when they were not in the room.
All participants were asked to complete an in-person survey within a month’s time of their child receiving the transplant and to complete follow-up surveys by phone or mail at 1 month, 6 months, and 1 year post-HSCT.
One hundred and ten parents were randomized to P-SCIP and 108 to BPC. Sixty-six parents completed P-SCIP through the last follow-up, as did 72 parents assigned to BPC.
Results
The researchers found that P-SCIP could reduce anxiety, depression, and—to a marginal degree—traumatic distress more than BPC.
However, the beneficial effects of P-SCIP relative to BPC were only seen at the first follow-up. The overall psychological benefits of P-SCIP were no longer evident at the 6-month or 1-year follow ups.
Still, anxiety, depression, and traumatic distress declined among all the parents over the 1-year follow-up period, which is consistent with other research on caregiver distress after pediatric HSCT.
“Our study suggests that our intervention had an impact when primary caregivers were experiencing high levels of trauma and stress—during the time of the actual transplant and hospitalization—and that the intervention was more beneficial for specific subgroups of caregivers,” Dr Manne said.
P-SCIP had a stronger effect than BPC among parents who began the study reporting higher depression and anxiety and among parents whose children developed graft-versus-host disease.
Similarly, P-SCIP had long-term effects on traumatic distress among parents who reported higher anxiety pre-HSCT and among parents whose children had graft-versus-host disease at HSCT discharge.
“Our findings suggest that screening caregivers for elevations in anxiety and targeting interventions specifically to them may prove beneficial,” Dr Manne said.
She added that a next step for this research might be to examine possible differences between mothers and fathers in the caregiver role, as most of the primary caregivers in this study were mothers.
Additionally, if this intervention is carried into the clinical setting, methods of improving intervention attendance might be considered. Utilizing phone or web-based contact that would allow the parent to remain in the room with the child during hospitalization might help the caregivers more easily access the intervention.
