(PS8-A24) Parental Stress and Parent Preferences for Telehealth or Face-to-face Services

The COVID-19 pandemic lead mental health clinicians to rethink the best modalities for delivering psychotherapy. Previous research on telemental health (TMH) services found that efficacy and satisfaction of services conducted via TMH are similar to those of face-to-face services and that TMH services may be less time consuming, more convenient, and easier to access, which may make it easier for individuals to access and engage in TMH services. Parents are often navigating many stressful responsibilities, making it difficult to pursue therapeutic interventions for themselves and their family. Previous research has demonstrated the benefits of assessing and adhering to patient preferences for treatment style and modality.

The current study assessed parent stress and modality preference and hypothesized that parents experiencing high levels of stress, as measured by the Parent Stress Index 4^th Edition Short Form (PSI-4-SF), would prefer a less time consuming and more accessible means of parent management training (PMT) and as such, would prefer remote, TMH services.

This study included 204 parents/caregivers of a child between ages 2 and 12 years old for whom they would be interested in participating in a parents-only PMT didactic group due to concerns about their child’s disruptive behavior. Parents read an explanation of PMT and were tasked with completing the PSI-4-SF and a novel questionnaire, the parent preferences questionnaire (PPQ), which included demographic related questions as well as assessed parent’s preference for TMH versus face-to-face services.

Approximately half of parents preferred face-to-face (n=102) and half preferred TMH (n=99). A modest positive correlation was found between parents’ PSI score and  the PPQ “stress score” (r=.28, p< .001). An ANOVA found that there is a significant effect of modality preference on PSI stress score.

When a logistic regression was employed with only PSI as a predictor for preference of face-to-face versus remote services, a significant effect was found (p< .023). PSI, as a predictor of modality preference, explained 3.4% of the variance on modality preference demonstrated that for every increase of one point on the PSI, the odds of preferring TMH decreases by 1.5%, which while significant, only explains a small amount of variance in modality preference.

A logistic regression analysis including covariates was conducted and results supported the findings of the initial logistic regression (p=.026). The logistic regression with covariates showed that PSI along with the covariates explained 39.4% of the variance on modality preference. The logistic regression with covariates shows that for every increase of one point on the PSI, the odds of preferring TMH decreases by 2%. The logistic regression with covariates revealed that the number of parents/guardians that live in the house (p=.020) and income level (p< .001) significantly affected parents’ preferences.

The findings of this study adds to the growing body of research that suggests that stress levels play a significant role in parents’/caregivers’ treatment preferences and that other factors such as number of parents/guardians in the household and income level play an even larger role in influencing treatment preferences.