Understanding the Wellbeing and Support Needs of Carers of Parents with Bipolar
• Partner of a parent with bipolar • Living with partner and child • Parent with bipolar has at least one child, up to 18 years old, for whom they have parental responsibility.
We will use both a quantitative survey and qualitative interviews to explore rates of use and experiences of carer’s assessments, as well as support needs and wellbeing. Survey: Our recruitment target for the survey is 150 participants. Participants will complete the survey online. It will be developed and hosted on the online survey software REDCap (Research Electronic Data Capture), which the research team has used previously an ongoing trial (IBPI trial). It will be a cross-sectional survey, so participants will complete the survey once. The survey has been designed with our Carer Reference Group to ensure it is focussed on relevant factors to them, and that it is written in accessible language. The survey includes questions on social demographic information of the carer and their family, including the carer’s age, gender, ethnicity, education, geographical location, and duration of caring. The survey will also ask about their partner’s and their child’s sociodemographic information, including age, gender, ethnicity and diagnoses and recent healthcare usage. These questions will be included to help characterise the sample, which will be used during interview sampling, as well as to explore the relationships between these factors and experiences of wellbeing, depression, and anxiety. The survey also includes questions on knowledge and experiences of Carer’s assessments. These questions will explore whether participants know what a carer’s assessment is and how to access one, and whether they have had one. If so, questions will ask to what extent it met their needs for support and their satisfaction with the process. Overall, this will help us to understand the proportion of this group who are accessing these assessments and what impact they have had. The survey will also include standardised measures of wellbeing, anxiety (GAD-7), depression (PHQ-8) and carer wellbeing and support. Using standardised measures will help us to compare this sample with other groups
1. Age >= 18 years 2. Partner of a parent with bipolar 3. Living with partner and child 4. Parent with bipolar has at least one child, up to 18 years old, for whom they have parental responsibility. 5. Living in the UK
1. Live outside of the UK. 2. Live separately from their partner or child. 3. Do not understand written English. 4. Do not have computer literacy skills required to complete the online questionnaire.