Psychological predictors of ‘living well’ with dementia: findings from the IDEAL study

Abstract

Objectives: Increasingly, research has explored how psychological resources enable adaptation to illness. However, it is unclear whether psychological resources protect against the potential negative effects on living well with a progressive and life-limiting condition such as dementia. This paper examines the association between psychological resources and the ability to ‘live well’ with dementia.

Method: Data from 1547 people with mild-to-moderate dementia in the Improving the experience of Dementia and Enhancing Active Life (IDEAL) cohort were used. Multivariate linear regression was employed to examine the association between self-reported measures of psychological resources (self-efficacy, optimism and self-esteem) and indices of capability to ‘live well’ (quality of life, well-being and life satisfaction).

Results: All three measures of psychological resources had positive and independent associations with indices of living well and the effect sizes were similar. Effect sizes reduced when accounting for shared variance between psychological resources, showing some overlap in these constructs.

Conclusion: Self-efficacy, optimism and self-esteem were each associated with capability to ‘live well’. Overlap between these three resources is evident and when combined they may provide greater resilience when dealing with the challenges of living with dementia. Interventions for people with dementia could seek to improve levels of these potentially-modifiable psychological resources.

Keywords:

• Self-esteem
• self-efficacy
• optimism
• well-being
• life satisfaction

Acknowledgements

Thank you to Dr Yu-Tzu Wu for her statistical support throughout. We are also grateful to all those that participated in the study, our local researchers, the ALWAYs group and the project advisory group.

Conflicts of interest

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Author contributions

RAL is responsible for the data analysis and interpretation, and drafting the article. SMN, CQ, AM, MDK, JVH, RWJ and LC were involved in the original conception and design of the IDEAL study. All authors contributed to the critical revision of the article, and approved the version to be published.

Data availability

The IDEAL data will be deposited with the UK Data Archive upon completion of the study in March 2020. Details on how the data can be accessed after this date will be made available on the project website www.idealproject.org.uk.

Additional information

Funding

The IDEAL study is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (UK) and the National Institute for Health Research (UK) through grant ES/L001853/1 ‘Improving the experience of dementia and enhancing active life: living well with dementia’ (Investigators: L. Clare, I. R. Jones, C. Victor, J. V. Hindle, R. W. Jones, M. Knapp, M. Kopelman, A. Martyr, R. G. Morris, S. M. Nelis, J. Pickett, C. Quinn, J. Rusted, N. Savitch, J. Thom, R. Whitaker). The support of the ESRC and NIHR is gratefully acknowledged.