Month: March 2017

A substantial literature has reported that stress negatively impacts on cognitive processes. As dementia caregiving can be stressful, it has been hypothesized that the challenges of dementia care may increase caregivers’ own vulnerability to cognitive decline.

Our findings are in line with the idea that greater psychological stress in response to challenges associated with dementia care predicts poorer caregiver executive functioning, particularly among caregivers with low CR (cognitive reserve). However, these findings are cross sectional; it is also possible that poorer executive functioning contributes to greater caregiver stress.

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Nearly ten million American women are caregivers of elders with dementia and may experience overwhelming stress that adversely affects their mental health. Interventions to teach them resourcefulness skills for managing stress can promote optimal mental health and facilitate continued caregiving. However, effectiveness of resourcefulness training (RT) cannot be examined until its need is established.
The results suggest a substantial need for resourcefulness training in women dementia caregivers and support moving forward to test RT’s effectiveness for reducing caregiver stress and depressive symptoms.

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This article states that differences do exist between types of caregivers that explain variability in quality of life, depressive symptoms and perseverance time. The findings may give direction for tailored interventions for caregivers of persons with dementia, which may improve social health and reduce health care costs. The factors considered were (i) caregivers’ age, relationship with persons with dementia, severity of dementia, and (ii) tendency towards stress and difficulty adapting to stress.

This article is not available from the Academy Library’s collection. If you would like us to request it from another library, please call 0161 291 5778 or email the UHSM Academy Library

The carer-delivered individual cognitive stimulation therapy (iCST) was developed to improve cognition and quality of life of people with dementia. The study aims to explore people with dementia and family carers’ concepts of mental stimulation and experiences of participating in the iCST intervention.
People with dementia and their family carers found iCST stimulating and enjoyable, but many had difficulty delivering all the sessions as planned. Family carers suggested that providing extra support by involving other people in delivering the intervention may help to improve adherence to the intervention. iCST may be a useful tool to encourage people with dementia and their carers to communicate.

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Consumer health informatics (CHI) such as web-based applications may provide the platform for enabling the over 15 million family caregivers of patients with Alzheimer’s Disease or related dementias the information they need when they need it to support behavioral symptom management. However, for CHI to be successful, it is necessary that it be designed to meet the specific information needs of family caregivers in the context in which caregiving occurs. A sociotechnical systems approach to CHI design can help to understand the contextual complexities of family caregiving and account for those complexities in the design of CHI for family caregivers.

This article is not available from the Academy Library’s collection. If you would like us to request it from another library, please call 0161 291 5778 or email the UHSM Academy Library

The results from this randomized controlled trial indicate that mindfulness meditation and mantra has promise as a feasible and effective caregiver intervention for quality of life and physiological responding to stress. Adherence to between-session meditation practice was significantly associated with decreases in depression and self-reported improvements in ability to cope with stress, particularly among older female dementia family caregivers.

This article is not available from the Academy Library’s collection. If you would like us to request it from another library, please call 0161 291 5778 or email the UHSM Academy Library