About our research

People suffering from a physical illness, and their family, may start to exhibit emotional symptoms such as anxiety, post-traumatic stress and depression. Unfortunately, only a few of those who experience emotional problems as a consequence of their physical illness get the help they need through the regular health service.

In U-CARE we are aiming to develop support and psychological treatments to supplement the treatments currently offered within the regular healthcare, so as to enable as many people as possible to have access to effective help when they need it. Everyone who participates in our studies is helping us along the way to achieve our goal, and it is valuable that as many people as possible to take part. This increases our possibilities to develop internet-based psychological self-help programs that can benefit many people.

Support and treatment via the internet
Within U-CARE, we are currently working on developing and evaluating internet-based self-help programs with interactive support and cognitive behavioural therapy designed to help patients with a physical illness and their families. There are a number of advantages offering help and support via the internet. One is that people themselves can choose what time of the day they work with the program. Another is that people can have access to the program no matter where they live, so that geographical distance and limited psychosocial resources in their local health service no longer prevent access to effective care.

Citizen-based research
Patient and citizen collaboration is a very important part of our activities. We do the research together with patients and other citizens, not for them. This approach helps us to formulate accurate and relevant research questions, to apply acceptable research methods and to increase the relevance and usefulness of the interventions we develop within U-CARE.

Our goal
If the treatments that are developed and evaluated within U-CARE prove to be effective, our objective is to implement them in the care offered to patients and their families within the regular healthcare system. We aim to achieve this through close collaboration with patients, their families and various health care professionals. We hope that our efforts will lead to reduce suffering in connection to physical illness and to a reduction in the economic cost to individuals and to society as a whole.