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A randomized trial of a telephone family assessment intervention was conducted during a 2.5 month period on 224 ambulatory primary care patients, aged 18-49 years, who were selected according to self-report of elevated family stress levels. Family physicians conducted telephone interviews to collect information from patients on their supportive and stressful family members. The working hypothesis was that this process would lead to reduction in the patient's family stress and to improvement in family support and personal health status. Patients reported that the intervention caused them to think about their family support and helped them to feel better. Comparison of family factor and functional health scores before and after intervention also indicated a limited beneficial effect, but only for a small subset of black patients. These results suggest that the telephone family assessment alone is inadequate as an intervention and should be strengthened to include professional assistance to patients for the family problems that are identified by the assessment.
Parkerson et al. (Sat,) studied this question.