Caring again: Support for parent caregivers of wounded, ill, and/or injured adult children veterans.

BACKGROUND: Parents often provide care to adult children veterans with polytrauma, traumatic brain injury, and/or post-traumatic stress disorder. OBJECTIVE: This two-arm randomized clinical trial compared interventions to help parent caregivers improve their depression, anxiety, and burden and manage care by decreasing troubling and concerning behaviors. METHODS: Interventions were six one-hour structured one-on-one behavioral sessions (REACH) or six 30-minute prerecorded online educational webinars. Both focused on knowledge, strategies for care, and coping, but REACH sessions were targeted, interactive, and skills-based. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected by telephone. Quantitative analyses included chi-squared test or independent samples t-test and repeated measures mixed linear modeling, with theme development for qualitative data. RESULTS: There were 163 parent caregivers, mostly mothers. During six months, participants in both arms improved significantly in depression, anxiety, burden, and reported veteran troubling and concerning behaviors. REACH caregivers showed a group by time improvement in concerning behaviors. Benefits included resources, self-reflection, not feeling alone, new skills, improved self-efficacy, and helping others. Specific concerns include exclusion from military and veteran care briefings and concern for the future. CONCLUSION: The positive response to both interventions provides opportunities for organizations with varying resources to provide support for parent caregivers. Interventions need to be targeted to parents' particular concerns and needs.