Children of parents with a mental Illness – plan for equitable and sustainable mobile health-based digital interventions to reach and support them

Research idea and purpose.

Children of parents with a mental health illness (COPMI) have the right to receive preventive interventions with the aim of avoiding developing their own mental health and socioeconomic problems.

However, access to interventions varies widely within Sweden´s health care and social services.The purpose of the full project is to contribute to equitable and sustainable preventive mobile health (mHealth) based digital interventions for COPMI.

The explorative planning grant allows us to prepare for the full project and has the following aims: 1) needs assessment via consultation with the target group (youth) and reference group (professionals/civic society, scientists), 2) systematic mapping and interdisciplinary quality assessment of internationally available mHealth applications (apps), and 3) to explore the prerequisites for development, evaluation, implementation, sustainable access, and further development.

Work plan, methods and project realization.To fulfill our aims, we will collaborate in different constellations, conduct interviews and workshops with youths and a reference group, and identify and do quality assessments of existing apps,using the well-known Mobile App Rating Scale (MARS) and its user version uMARS.

Based on the knowledge built during the collaborative activities in Aims 1 and 2, we can assertively design the study protocol for the larger project, detailing the adoption or development of a mHealth app that can be integrated as part of a digital intervention for our target group. This research protocol constitutes one of the primary outcomes of the planning grant.

Societal relevance and utilization. Equitable and health promoting care is one of the goals of Swedish public health politics. Despite overarching efforts on a governmental level, support to COPMI lags behind in everyday health care. Because of this, nationwide available digital solution that easily can be accessed by youth themselves is desirable.

We are convinced that our project can contribute to this and inform policy and practice as well as develop support to youth.