Objective: Online psychological therapies provide a way to connect adolescent and young adult (AYA) cancer survivors to evidence-based support. We aimed to establish the feasibility, acceptability, and safety of Recapture life, a six-session group-based online cognitive-behavioural intervention, led by a facilitator, for AYAs in the early post-treatment period.
Methods: A randomised-controlled trial compared Recapture Life to an online peer-support group control and a waitlist control. Participants could nominate a support person. Acceptability was assessed using study opt-in and retention rates, participant-reported benefits/burdens of participation, and group facilitator burden. We also assessed the feasibility (eg, frequency/impact of technological difficulties) and psychological safety (ie, occurrence of clinically concerning distress) of the program.
Results: Sixty-one participants took part (45 AYAs, 51.1% female; 19 support people). The opt-in rate was 30%, the enrolment rate was 87%, and 75% of participants took part in ≥5/6 sessions. AYAs reported high benefit and low burden of participation. Overall, 95 online group sessions were conducted; few required rescheduling by group facilitators (3%), but many took place outside of office hours (~90 hours). It took 40 days on average to create online groups, but established weekly sessions commenced quickly (M = 4.0 minutes). Technological difficulties were common but had a low impact on intervention delivery. Although 54% of AYAs returned a clinically concerning distress screen at some point, none reflected acute mental health risks.
Conclusions: The data largely indicate that Recapture Life is an acceptable, feasible, and safe model of evidence-based psychological support for AYAs during early survivorship, which nevertheless experienced common challenges in online/AYA intervention delivery.
Keywords: adolescent; cancer; feasibility; oncology; online videoconferencing; psychological interventions; survivorship; young adult.
© 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.