Half of caregivers in the US are adults caring for a parent, and many of these are young adults, between the ages of 18-35. This presents communication and quality of life challenges for both the young adult child caregiver and parent with cancer; however, this dyad (e.g., two people together) has not been well studied. We will conduct interviews with young adult child caregivers and parents with cancer to learn more about communication challenges and support needs in this dyad. Dyad members will also complete self-report measures asking about mood, coping, communication and quality of life. Findings will inform the development of an intervention to improve dyadic communication and quality of life.

LiveWell mBC is a group-based skills training program for women with metastatic breast cancer (mBC). The program teaches skills from dialectical behavioral therapy, an evidence-based psychotherapy, that have been adapted specifically to help women live as well as possible, with metastatic breast cancer. LiveWell mBC involves meeting with a small group of women with mBC plus two skills trainers 9 times total via telemedicine. Meetings include orientation plus 8 sessions learning and practicing skills including mindfulness, emotion regulation, distress tolerance and interpersonal effectiveness and they last 90 minutes each. We are interested in seeing whether the program can help women to balance their emotions and better manage distress (e.g., anxiety, sadness) and symptoms (e.g., fatigue, breathlessness, pain) that can be common when living with mBC.

Participants will be randomly assigned to one of two groups. They will have a 2 in 3 chance of being assigned to LiveWell mBC (experimental group) and a 1 in 3 chance of being assigned to Usual Care (control group). Women in the usual care group will continue to receive their standard oncology care. Participants in both groups will complete questionnaires four times total. Participants may be invited to participate in an exit interview about their experience. Participants will be compensated for completing questionnaires and the interview. For most people, participation will last approximately 4 months.