Category: Dementia – Supporting Carers

Older family carers of people with dementia represent an increasing but overlooked population of family carers. This research aimed to explore how these individuals make sense of their own quality of life and to identify the factors that enhance or compromise this. Four focus groups were conducted in 2014 with 19 older family carers in community-based support groups in Nottinghamshire, United Kingdom. Data were transcribed verbatim and analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. Thirty-three subthemes emerged and were collated into three superordinate themes: 1) aspects of care and caregiving, 2) feelings and concerns, and 3) satisfaction with life and caregiving. This study identified a broad range of aspects that are of particular importance to the quality of life of older family carers of people with dementia. These findings are expected to inform future research as well as health and social care providers with the aim of improving life quality for this population.

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Cognitive stimulation therapy (CST) is a well-established group psychosocial intervention for people with dementia. There is evidence that home-based programmes of cognitive stimulation delivered by family caregivers may benefit both the person and the caregiver. However, no previous studies have evaluated caregiver-delivered CST. This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of a home-based, caregiver-led individual cognitive stimulation therapy (iCST) program in (i) improving cognition and quality of life (QoL) for the person with dementia and (ii) mental and physical health (well-being) for the caregiver.
The article concludes that there was no evidence that iCST has an effect on cognition or QoL for people with dementia. However, participating in iCST appeared to enhance the quality of the caregiving relationship and caregivers’ QoL.

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Caregiver burden in dementia is an important issue, but few studies have examined the mental health of younger ( 65 years) family caregivers by comparing them with age- and gender-matched community residents. We aimed to compare the mental health of dementia caregivers with that of community residents and to clarify factors related to mental health problems in younger and older caregivers.
Dementia caregivers had a lower mental QOL (qualtiy of life) than community residents. To maintain caregivers’ mental QOL, it is necessary to provide younger caregivers with skills or professional interventions for dealing with behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia, and older caregivers must be offered adequate care support.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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This article aims to investigate the effects of the practice of yoga in combination with compassion meditation on the quality of life, attention, vitality and self-compassion of family caregivers of patients with Alzheimer’s disease. The yoga and compassion meditation program group showed statistically significant improvements on quality of life, attention, vitality and self-compassion scores as compared with the control group, which showed no statistical significant differences at the postintervention time-point. The findings of the present study suggest that an 8-week yoga and compassion meditation program can improve the quality of life, vitality, attention, and self-compassion of family caregivers of Alzheimer’s disease patients.

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