Acceptance Commitment Therapy for Caregivers of People with Memory Loss

Plain-language summary

Family caregivers for persons with dementia report high levels of depression, stress, and burden. Caregivers' limited time, transportation constraints, and unpredictable schedules make on-line, self-guided interventions more accessible and scalable. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is an established and effective in-person therapy, well-suited to the dementia care giving context where caregivers cannot minimize stress exposure, and report difficult thoughts and emotions. ACT for Caregivers is an on-line self-guided ACT intervention that showed effectiveness in a Stage I pilot (n=52) with participants reporting decreased depressive symptoms, stressful reactions to caring, and caregiver burden, and increased quality of life and positive aspects of caring (all p \<.05). Learning from the pilot, the current Stage III intervention will shorten the program from 10 sessions to 6 sessions. The investigators introduce a wait list randomized control trial (RCT) design with fully longitudinal mixed methods to evaluate ACT for Caregivers. Data will be collected at pretest, post-test, and 6-weeks follow-up. Study aims are: 1) to evaluate ACT for Caregivers in a larger sample using an RCT, 2) to understand user experiences and the process of change by collecting short response data from all participants at all time points and interviewing a subset of participants in-depth at two time points, 3) to integrate quantitative and qualitative findings and examine areas of convergence and divergence. This project offers a promising prevention and intervention program to support family caregivers that is scalable, at low cost and with high impact.

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