Advancing Family Wellbeing Through a Massive Open Online Intervention: The LightBEAM Program

Launched by UNIVERSITY OF MANITOBA · Jun 10, 2025

Keywords

ClinConnect Summary

This clinical trial is testing a new online program called LightBEAM designed to help parents who are feeling stressed, anxious, depressed, or angry. The program focuses on improving parents’ mental health and parenting skills to support healthier relationships with their young children, which is important for the child’s development. LightBEAM builds on an earlier app called BEAM and offers helpful videos, progress tracking, group discussions, and exercises—all accessible online. The goal is to make mental health support easier to access, especially for families in remote areas or those waiting for other services.

Parents who live in Canada, are at least 18 years old, care for a child between about 1.5 to 9 years old, and have mild emotional distress may be eligible to join. Participants will use the LightBEAM app for 12 weeks, working through weekly videos and activities, and will be asked to share how they and their child are doing before, right after, and six months after the program. This study hopes to show that LightBEAM is an effective and convenient way to support families’ mental health and improve parent-child relationships.

Gender

ALL

Eligibility criteria

• Inclusion Criteria:
• • identify as a primary caregiver of any gender to an 18- to 107-month-old child
• • reside in Canada with access to internet connection
• • be aged 18 years or older
• • able to understand/read/speak in English
• • report at least mild emotional distress across depression, anxiety, anger, or parenting stress symptoms as assessed by the PHQ-9, GAD-7, PROMIS-Anger, and PSI
• • have access to an electronic device
• Exclusion Criteria:
• • below the age of 18 years
• • parenting a child outside the designated age range
• • live outside Canada
• • have participated in previous iterations of BEAM