(PS8-D91) Caregivers’ Attitudes Towards Youth Digital Mental Health Interventions During the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly impacted the lives of children and adolescents, and exacerbated an already existing youth mental health crisis. As the access to traditional face-to-face mental health services has been disrupted during this time, the potential value of digital mental health interventions (DMHI) have become increasingly apparent. These interventions show good efficacy in treating a number of mental health conditions in youth such as depression, anxiety, and substance use (Ye et al., 2014; Garrido et. al., 2019). Despite their potential benefits, uptake and consistent use of these interventions have been low. Since parents are often the gatekeepers to services, there is a need to understand parents and caregivers’ comfort with and concerns about using DMHIs. Examining factors predicting these attitudes during the COVID-19 pandemic can help identify ways to increase the use of DMHIs to address gaps in mental health care.

This study recruited 4,853 parents and caregivers who have at least one child in a mentoring program. All participants completed an online survey including questions on parent/caregiver and child demographic information, experiences with and attitudes towards mental health treatment and DMHIs. Findings show that parents had a range of concerns with their children using DMHIs, most notably not knowing how to find these interventions and preferring to handle mental health issues within the family. Nonetheless, nearly three-quarters of children (74.61%, n=3,620) have received help for mental or psychological challenges, most commonly engaged in therapy with a trained professional (42.94%, n= 2,084). Nearly ten percent  (9.44%, n= 474) of parents accessed DMHIs for their child’s mental health, while more than 90% reported that they believed that such interventions could be helpful for their child’s mental health. However, 41% reported that they would be comfortable with their child using these interventions. Results of a hierarchical regression analysis showed that a range of factors accounted for variance in parent’s comfort (R2= .28, p < .001). Parent comfort with and perceived helpfulness of therapy (β = .44, p< .001), attitudes towards psychological support (β = .03, p=.042), and parent (β = .05, p=.002) and child (β = -.12, p< .001) previous use of therapy accounted for 24% of the variance in parent’s comfort with DMHIs. The implications of these findings for increasing the uptake and dissemination of DMHIs for youth will be discussed.