2 - (SYM 21) Caregiver Treatment Preferences and Attitudes

Background: Caregivers are responsible for making mental health service decisions for themselves and their children. Additionally, past research has repeatedly found that adolescents report caregiver-related barriers to accessing mental health services. Thus, as gatekeepers of services, caregivers are a distinctly important population to understand in terms of their mental health treatment preferences and attitudes. This study measured and examined how caregiver treatment preferences, evidence-based practice (EBP) attitudes, and vaccine attitudes are related. We included vaccine attitudes for an integrated understanding of caregiver healthcare preferences.

Methods: As part of an online randomized controlled trial of a critical health literacy intervention, 250 caregivers completed a 5-item measure of preferences for various treatment elements (Kirk et al., 2016), the Consumer Attitudes Towards Evidence Based Services Scale (CAEBS; 29 items, 4 factors: F1: Beliefs Regarding Therapists’ Practices; F2: Attitudes about Mental Health Policy; F3: Negative Personal-Level Attitudes toward EBPs; and F4: Negative Societal-Level Attitudes towards EBPs; Teh et al., 2016), and a 3-item measure of vaccine hesitancy (Moran et al., 2016).

Results: On average, caregivers (70% White, 23% Black and/or Latinx, 7% Asian/Other) were 35 years old, had 1-2 children, and half had a bachelor’s degree. They ranked the following treatment elements in order of preference: therapy is scientifically-supported, therapeutic alliance, therapist empathy, therapist experience, and client speaking for the majority of therapy. Higher preference for scientifically-supported therapy was associated with more positive EBP attitudes across 3 of the 4 CAEBS factors (F1: B = 4.85; p < .01; F2: B = .86; p < .05; F3: B = -.63; p < .001), and with lower vaccine hesitancy (B = -.78; p < .05). Additionally, both higher preference for therapist empathy (F1: B = -2.84; p < .05; F2: B = -.99; p < .001) and experience (F3: B = .274; p < .01) were associated with negative EBP attitudes. Therapeutic alliance, the second highest rated treatment preference, was not associated with EBP or vaccine attitudes.

Conclusions: Results indicate caregiver treatment preferences and attitudes that align with evidence-based mental healthcare. Additional results and implications for research and practice will be discussed.