Feasibility Study of Caregiver-Provided Life Review: Implementation, Adaptation, and Effects on Care Recipients’ Depressive Symptoms

ABSTRACT

Objectives

This study aimed to examine the feasibility of unpaid, family/friend caregivers conducting life reviews with people with dementia in long-term care and community settings and reported on how we adapted the intervention modality under the COVID-19 pandemic.

Methods

Twenty-one caregiver-care recipient dyads completed 6 weekly life review sessions. The intervention format was modified to accommodate COVID-19 restrictions. Primary and secondary outcome measures were analyzed based on repeated measures at baseline and post-intervention.

Results

Due to the changing nature of the pandemic, we iterated the caregiver training intervention four times to accommodate caregivers’ needs while having faced multiple recruitment challenges with care facility residents. Care recipients’ depression appeared to have improved (p = .001).

Conclusions

Although the COVID-19 pandemic created unique recruitment challenges, all the care recipients seemed to enjoy the life review activities supported by the positive outcomes in gaining socialization opportunities. It may be beneficial to offer a more self-paced intervention modality to ease the burden on caregivers.

Clinical implications

It appears that unpaid family/friend caregivers can provide life reviews to their loved ones with dementia. Training the caregivers on how to provide life reviews can be an easy, low-risk activity that might ameliorate depressive symptoms in the care recipients.

KEYWORDS:

• Caregiver
• care recipient
• community dwellers
• dementia
• depression
• feasibility study
• gerontology
• life review
• older adults

Clinical implications

• It appears that unpaid family/friend caregivers can offer an innovative life review activity that might ameliorate depressive symptoms to their loved ones at home.

• To further accommodate the need of caregivers, the next step is to develop an online caregiver training module so that caregivers can watch the video at any time and start their life reviews when both caregivers and care recipients are ready.

Acknowledgments

Miyawaki was partially funded by the Alzheimer’s Association under Grant AARG-20-685255.

The authors acknowledge the effort of our Research Assistants, Helen Spencer, Madison Steele, and Ashley Bryan for their endless recruitment efforts and dedication to go through the screening, assessments, and intervention cycles alongside their paired caregiver-care recipient dyads. We thank all the participants to complete the study despite their busy schedules during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data that supported the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, CEM, upon reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Alzheimer’s Association [AARG-20-685255].