Abstract
Background: Food allergy has been documented to have a profound impact on parents of children with food allergy, with caregivers reporting a significant impact on quality of life (QoL) and psychological distress. Parents have reported increased stress, anxiety, worry and low mood in relation to their child’s food allergy, and therefore interventions aimed at mitigating this impact are of prime importance. There has been emerging evidence to suggest that interventions involving Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) have the potential to improve these outcomes.
Method: This study used a feasibility, Randomised Controlled Trial design to compare a brief, online, group CBT intervention with a control group who did not take part in the intervention. Measures of food-allergy related QoL, worry, depression, anxiety, stress, and food-allergy self-efficacy were completed at baseline and one and three-month follow ups by 33 parents of children with food allergy. Participants in the intervention group also completed a feedback survey in order to comment on the acceptability of the intervention.
Results: This study showed that the RCT was, as a whole, feasible. A preliminary signal of efficacy was found for reducing worry, stress, anxiety, and the burden of food allergy on QoL. Food-allergy self-efficacy scores also improved. For parents who completed the intervention, the study was deemed acceptable. However, a higher drop-out rate in the intervention group in comparison to the control group indicated limitations to the feasibility of this study.
Conclusion: Promising initial findings indicate that a larger scale, adequately powered RCT is warranted. Changes to the protocol in order to improve participant engagement in the intervention group may be warranted in future studies.