Background: Families living with a person with mental illness can experience distress requiring therapeutic interventions. Web-based mindfulness interventions have shown beneficial health outcomes for both clinical and healthy populations, and may help families cope and overcome barriers that can otherwise hinder a help-seeking process.
Aims: To develop and assess outcomes of a web-based mindfulness intervention for families living with a person with mental illness.
Methods: A pilot study investigating an 8-week web-based mindfulness intervention with a pre-post design and follow-up after 3 months, with mindfulness as the primary outcome and perceived stress, caregiver burden and self-compassion as secondary outcomes. The study included a sample of 97 persons approached by advertisement in newspapers, newsletters, and online.
Results: The study showed significant improvements in levels of mindfulness post-intervention and at follow-up as well as significant improvements in levels of perceived stress, caregiver burden, and self-compassion both post-intervention and at follow-up.
Discussion: Acceptability and feasibility of the intervention were high, outcomes were relevant, and the intervention showed positive and significant results supporting the hypothesis that the intervention may help families cope with a stressful situation.
Conclusion: Further randomized controlled studies of the intervention are needed to investigate the intervention's effectiveness, including dose-effect studies.
Keywords: Caregiver burden; compassion; mental illness; mindfulness; stress; web-based support.