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Funded Grants

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Community implementation and evaluation of acceptance and commitment training (ACT) for family caregivers

Project Overview

Family caregivers of people with neurodevelopmental disabilities (NDDs) often experience stress and mental health difficulties (e.g., anxiety, depression); however, there are few services to support their wellbeing. Acceptance and Commitment Training (ACT), which increases acceptance and mindfulness skills to help people cope, may be helpful to them. Our ACT-based intervention is unique in that it is co-designed and co-delivered by clinicians and caregivers together. We found that caregivers of people with autism and FASD who participated in our workshops reported feeling less depressed, stressed and isolated. We have started to train new caregivers and clinicians from across Canada to deliver ACT workshops, both in-person and virtually. An important next step is to support our newly trained facilitators to deliver ACT to caregivers of people with NDDs in their communities, and to better understand how it works when implemented in real-world conditions. We also want to understand what makes it easy or hard for caregivers and clinicians to co-lead the intervention together. These findings will help us successfully spread our partnered ACT intervention to other agencies and communities, and contribute to the movement of empowering caregivers to have their voices heard in co-creating, co-designing, and co-delivering interventions for other caregivers.

Principal Investigator

Johanna Lake , Center for Addiction and Mental Health and University Health Network

Team Members

Yona Lunksy, Center for Addiction and Mental Health

Kenneth Fung, University Health Network

Partners and Donors

Kids Brain Health Network

Azrieli Foundation

Project Ongoing

Community implementation and evaluation of acceptance and commitment training (ACT) for family caregivers

  • Program Type

    Team grants

  • Area of research

    Neurodevelopment

  • Competition

    KBHN Strategic Investment Fund

  • Province

    Ontario

  • Start Date

    2022

  • Total Grant Amount

    $479,141

  • Health Canada Contribution

    $239,571

Contact Us

1200 McGill College Avenue
Suite 1600, Montreal, Quebec
H3B 4G7

+1 (514) 989-2989 info@braincanada.ca

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Territorial acknowledgement

The offices of Brain Canada Foundation are located on the traditional, ancestral territory of the Kanien'kehá:ka Peoples, a place which has long served as a site of meeting and exchange amongst nations. We honour and pay respect to elders past, present and emerging, and dedicate ourselves to moving forward in the spirit of partnership, collaboration, and reconciliation. In our work, we focus our efforts on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action, particularly those that pertain to improving health for Indigenous Peoples and that focus on advancing our own learning on Indigenous issues.

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Registration number: 89105 2094 RR0001

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