Designing an empowerment program for families of children with mental disorders: A mixed-method protocol

Children's health affects all aspects of family health, and mental disorders add to the care burden of families. To provide care to these children, it is essential to empower families, which can increase their competencies. Considering this issue, the present study will be conducted with the aim of designing and developing an empowerment program for families of children with mental disorders.

This mixed-method study was conducted in three phases. To develop a family empowerment program, in the first phase, a qualitative study is conducted via semistructured interviews to identify the needs of families of children with mental disorders. Data analysis will be performed via conventional content analysis via the Granheim and Landman method. The second phase will be carried out in three stages: reviewing the literature, prioritizing needs, and developing the initial version of the family empowerment program. In the third phase, the feasibility of the developed program will be evaluated via validated questionnaires before and 3 months after the intervention in two groups of families as a randomized field superiority trial study. In this step, the data will be analyzed via STATA 14 software. For the obtained data, descriptive statistics (means and standard deviations) and ANCOVA tests will be used to evaluate the results.

Knowing the views of caregivers and people providing health services to children with mental disorders and their families to create a real and evidence-based empowerment plan, considering the sociocultural goals of society, can potentially help reduce the care burden of these families. The results of studies in this field can help policymakers improve access and equality, guarantee the uniformity of the quality of care, ensure the long-term durability of services, and correct the gaps in empowering families with children with mental disorders.