# Comparison of E-Health vs. In-Person Delivered Family Psychoeducation Treatment

> **NIH VA I01** · VETERANS HEALTH ADMINISTRATION · 2021 · —

## Abstract

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant):    
In the VA Family Psycho-Educational (FPE) is a component of the Uniform Services standard for care of Veterans with schizophrenia and their family members. FPE includes single family variants, e.g., Behavioral Family Therapy, which is provided to individual families (consumer and family members); and multi-family variants, e.g., Multi-Family Group Psycho-Education (MFG-stands for 'Multi-Family Group'), which is provided to multiple families (consumers and family members together) in a single treatment group. To promote the availability of FPE to all Veterans who could benefit, the VA began national trainings of clinicians in FPE. Despite this training, the proven effectiveness of FPE, and that it is the standard for care, it is not widely available to Veterans, is underutilized even where available, and can incur relatively high resistance from Veterans and families. Less than 5% of VA Medical Centers provide FPE. Further, even where it is available, it reaches a relatively small proportion of Veterans who could
benefit. Barriers to receiving this treatment include the lack of appropriately trained clinicians,
the need for Veterans and family members to travel to receive these services--this maybe a particularly important hurdle for a treatment that meets bi- weekly for a minimum of nine months--the tendency to avoid in-person treatment due to the stigma associated with seeking mental health treatment, and the difficulty of providing treatments after hours or on weekends when families are more likely be able to attend. It is important for the VA to have treatment delivery models that maximize the likelihood that all Veterans in need will receive interventions such as FPE, including Veterans residing in rural settings, and Veterans who avoid VA settings due to stigma. E-health delivery of services has been a focus of the VA as a way to overcome these barriers. Specialized web-based approaches have been studied and found to be successful for people with schizophrenia, and their families, and can deliver content that is intensive and engaging with reduced requirements for staff time. Our previous work has developed a model and guidelines to design e-health applications for persons with schizophrenia and others with cognitive impairments (e.g., Rotondi, VA RR&D D61804R), and developed a highly scalable intervention termed Schizophrenia On-line Access to Resources (SOAR) (Rotondi, R01 MH63484). SOAR incorporated FPE into a modernized model that: incorporates web-based delivery; provides the ability of users to individualize commitment and services to meet varied preferences and needs, in order to address prominent reasons for resistance to FPE; and is accessible from homes and smart phones. SOAR is highly successful at reducing illness symptoms for persons with schizophrenia and improving their and their family members' knowledge of the illness. The aims of this study are to conduct: 1) a 2-arm non-inferiority ...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9889142
- **Project number:** 5I01HX001443-04
- **Recipient organization:** VETERANS HEALTH ADMINISTRATION
- **Principal Investigator:** ARMANDO James ROTONDI
- **Activity code:** I01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** VA
- **Fiscal year:** 2021
- **Award amount:** —
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2015-01-01 → 2018-09-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9889142

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9889142, Comparison of E-Health vs. In-Person Delivered Family Psychoeducation Treatment (5I01HX001443-04). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-22 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9889142. Licensed CC0.

---

*[NIH grants dataset](/datasets/nih-grants) · CC0 1.0*