The Efficacy of Digital Help for Divorced Danes: Randomized Controlled Trial of Cooperation After Divorce (CAD) and Sick Days

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articleResearchpeer-review

Few digital divorce interventions have undergone rigorous randomized control trial study (RCT) testing of their physical and psychological health effects. This paper describes the Cooperation after Divorce (CAD) intervention including background, target group, design and engagement strategies, intervention development, content, and theoretical cornerstones. The 17-module digital psychoeducational intervention addresses three main content areas: (1) the divorcee themselves, (2) the children, and (3) co-parenting. The content of the modules provided psychoeducation and therapeutic activities focused on the maladaptive interactional patterns between former partners and how to develop new interactional schemas, including a focus on when and how to communicate with the former partner in a way that does not escalate conflict. A randomized controlled trial (N = 778) assessed the effect of CAD in terms of number of sick days. Participants were assessed at 3-, 6- and 12-month post-divorce. Independent samples t test revealed that participants in the intervention group on average reported 5.82 fewer sick days one year post-divorce than did participants in the control condition. The results suggest that digital post-divorce interventions decrease sick days for newly divorce individuals, thereby offering long-term human, family, and public health benefits.

Original languageEnglish
JournalContemporary Family Therapy
ISSN0892-2764
DOIs
Publication statusE-pub ahead of print - 2024

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
We would like to acknowledge that the development of the digital intervention was financially supported by the Egmont Foundation; moreover, this project was supported by the Carlsberg Foundation’s ‘Distinguished Associate Professor Fellowship’ (given to the last author) under Grant no. F16-0094. For due diligence, we would like to declare that two of the co-authors (First Author and Last Author) own the digital intervention through the Company ‘Cooperation after Divorce’ (Samarbejde Efter Skilsmisse ApS); these authors did not have access to the data nor did they decide on or complete the data analyses. The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Funding Information:
Open access funding provided by Copenhagen University. Development of the digital intervention was financially supported by the Egmont Foundation; moreover, this project was supported by the Carlsberg Foundation’s ‘Distinguished Associate Professor Fellowship’ (given to Gert Martin Hald; under Grant no. CF16-0094).

Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2024.

    Research areas

  • Digital intervention, Divorce, Divorce intervention, RCT, sick days

ID: 390512803