[Mental Illness 2014; 6:5120] [page 9]

Caregivers are known to experience increased morbidity when compared to non-caregivers. Does an intervention targeting caregiver distress affect their health care uti-lization? One hundred forty-eight caregivers of allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplant patients were randomized to treatment as usual (TAU) or a psychoeducation, paced res-piration, and relaxation (PEPRR) intervention. Assessments of caregivers ’ service utilization were collected at baseline and 1, 3, and 6 months post-transplant. During the first 30 days after patient transplant, caregiver med-ical and mental health professional service use decreased while support group attendance peaked. Mixed model regressions showed a significant decrease in mental health service use by the PEPRR group (P=0.001). At six months caregivers in TAU had predicted mar-ginal probabilities of mental health services utilization over 10 times as high as caregivers in PEPRR (18.1 % vs 1.5%). Groups failed to dif-fer in medical service (P=0.861) or support group (P=0.067) use. We can conclude that participation in PEPRR compared to TAU was associated with reduced mental health service utilization. Caregiver psychosocial support services are critical to improve caregiver out-comes