Project Summary/Abstract
Low-income mothers of young children represent a disadvantaged group who are at exceptional risk for
depressive syndromes and who have increasingly limited access to mental health services. Despite the
availability of efficacious treatments, most depressed persons do not receive treatment. Amongst the many
barriers to treatment, several of the most substantial include lack of mental health coverage, difficulties arranging
childcare, and the absence of transportation differentially affecting women of low socioeconomic status. For rural
women, these difficulties may be compounded by the scarcity of providers within reasonable proximity. In our
earlier work, in order to address access barriers, we developed and evaluated Mom-Net, an internet-facilitated
CBT intervention for depression tailored to mothers of young children.
Mom-Net was developed and evaluated in 2 NIMH-funded randomized controlled trials (R01MH091199 &
R01MH070426) that demonstrated clinically significant effects on depressive symptoms. The proposed project
is designed to develop and evaluate a prototype Mom-Net coach training tool for the program that will facilitate
implementation within community settings. Participants in the Phase I feasibility and usability trial will include 15
trainees who will participate in the developed training and certification process. In Phase II, development of the
training tool will be completed and then evaluated via a randomized controlled trial. Overall, the investigation will
contribute to the evidentiary base regarding the dissemination potential of this empirically-supported intervention,
adaptations to which have the potential to enable a greater proportion of the population to access and benefit
from it.
The proposed technology-based training tool should be highly sustainable, because it (a) relies on community
setting paraprofessional personnel to deliver the intervention, (b) is likely to prove cost-effective given we will
utilize a technology that can deliver training at scale, and (c) will improve fidelity by leveraging technology to
provide consistent training experiences to trainees and including a computer-mediated audio recorded
observation of client-coach sessions that will be reviewed and graded by an expert trainer to increase the
likelihood of intervention implementation fidelity.
