Engage Psychotherapy to Promote Connectedness in Caregivers

Study Summary

The Engage Coaching Project is a Stage 1 intervention development study. This study asks: "what behavioral strategies are needed to help socially disconnected caregivers with significant barriers to increasing connectedness?" This study uses a mixed methods approach to adapt a brief behavioral intervention-Social Engage psychotherapy-for use with socially disconnected caregivers. The ultimate goal is for Social Engage psychotherapy to be offered as a second step in a stepped care approach for caregivers who do not demonstrate an adequate response to a single-session psychoeducation plus resources intervention. Social Engage Psychotherapy helps caregivers bolster motivation for increasing connectedness, teaches problem solving skills, and provides behavioral practice with social engagement. Up to 8 brief sessions (typically 30 minutes) are provided weekly over no more than three months. This is a single-arm clinical trial of Social Engage psychotherapy, with up to 30 participants.

Primary Outcome

UCLA Loneliness Scale Version 3, which assesses self-reported loneliness. 20 items, rated as to how often the participant has felt a certain way in the prior month (e.g., "How often do you feel alone?") -- "never" (1), "rarely" (2), "sometimes" (3), or "often" (4). Higher scores indicate greater loneliness. However, some individual items must be reverse-coded so that higher total scores reflect greater loneliness (i.e., 1=4, 2=3, 3=2, 4=1). These items (e.g., "How often do you feel there are peo

Interventions

• BEHAVIORAL Engage coaching