Investigating the Effectiveness of a Virtual Family-centered Support Intervention on the Mental Health of Hemodialysis Patients and their Family Caregivers During the COVID-19 Pandemic

This study aimed to assess the effectiveness of a family-centered support intervention utilizing virtual education on the mental health of hemodialysis patients and their family caregivers amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.

Patients undergoing hemodialysis and their family caregivers may experience mental health disruptions.

In this quasi-experimental study, 30 family caregivers of hemodialysis patients who visited the hemodialysis center of the 22^nd-Bahman Hospital of Khaf in 2022 were selected using convenience sampling. All patients and family caregivers completed a demographic characteristics form and a mental health scale over the phone at baseline. The experimental group received targeted mental health education content for four weeks on the Eitaa social media platform. At this time, the mental health questionnaire was completed once more over the phone for all patients and their family caregivers. Independent t-tests and paired t-tests were used to analyze the data in SPSS-22. The significance level was set to p <0.05.

The mean age values of the patients and family caregivers were 47.63±8.36 and 33.53±4.86 years, respectively. Prior to the intervention, there was no significant difference (p <0.05) in the mean scores of mental health and its components between the experimental and control groups. Following the intervention, statistically significant reductions were observed in the scores of both the patients and caregivers of the experimental group compared to the controls (p <0.001).

The virtual family-centered support intervention could positively impact the mental health of hemodialysis patients and their family caregivers. Thus, the present intervention is suggested as a viable program to enhance the mental health of this group of patients and their respective caregivers.