Infant-Net: Taking an Empirically Based Behavioral Parent Training for Mothers of Infants from Home-Visiting to the Internet with Distal Coaching: Infant-Net RCT Preliminary Results

Parents of infants living in poverty are at significantly elevated risk of a host of detrimental outcomes, including the development of child behavior problems, neglect and abuse of children, child learning problems and parental substance abuse. Dramatic progress has been made in the development of effective interventions. Yet, there exist major obstacles to the effective delivery of mental health services. In addition, the meteoric rise of Internet use has created a new avenue for people to communicate and share ideas. These two trends are helping fuel the demand for mental health services and online support.
This presentation describes preliminary results from a randomized control trial with 150 mothers of infants with emphasis on the social networking component and its relationship to increased usage and effects. The research will involve a randomized control trial with mother/infant dyads assigned to experimental or attention-control conditions. After recruiting from rural and urban Oregon and Kansas, mothers are randomized to either the intervention or attention-control conditions. The adapted remotely-delivered interactive Internet intervention includes 3 components: (a) the PALS course; (b) video feedback and weekly coaching; and (c) social media support. Cohort 1 is completed and thus far, participants have completed an average of 6 sessions out of 11 sessions. There is a wide variation in the amount of time mothers are currently spending in the program, with an average of 11.33 hours (SD=10.26), 1.03 hrs per session (SD=10.27) and an average of 5.45 (SD=2.10) log-ins to the social network. The inaccessibility and underutilization of empirically supported mental health and other support services by families, is currently a significant and growing public health concern encouraging the adaptation for easy access for preventive services. Interventions that rely on computer and telecommunication technologies, including those that use the Internet to facilitate service delivery, are increasingly being viewed as valuable in this regard. Implications for social networking self-hosting or partnership with existing social networking sites (e.g. Facebook) will be explored. This paper will conclude with a presentation of future research directions.