Towards a Stepped Care Approach for the Delivery of Couple Based Coping and Support Training Programs to Enhance Adjustment to Major Health Problems

Health psychology interventions can improve patients' long-term psychological and physical adjustment to major health problems. The most powerful interventions actively include people close to the patient, usually their partner. Although these interventions are highly effective they are costly to provide, usually not offered as part of routine care, not accessible for people living in remote and rural areas, and have low rates of involvement (particularly by men). Finally, the universal application of intensive programs is probably unwarranted, as many patients do not develop psychological disorders. The current paper uses a specific example in the area of cancer to highlight the steps and obstacles involved in translating empirically validating couples and family interventions into programs that can be delivered in multi-media formats (such as DVD)