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The Wecareadvisor™: a Web-Based Tool to HELP Family Caregivers Manage the Behavioral and Psychological Symptoms of Dementia
Abstract

The Wecareadvisor™: a Web-Based Tool to HELP Family Caregivers Manage the Behavioral and Psychological Symptoms of Dementia

Helen C. Kales, Laura N. Gitlin and Constantine G. Lyketsos
The American journal of geriatric psychiatry, v 25(3), pp S31-S31
Mar 2017
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jagp.2017.01.066

Abstract

One of the biggest challenges in the day to day management of dementia is the behavioral symptoms that go hand and hand with the illness including agitation, anxiety, depression, aggression, sleep problems and socially inappropriate behaviors. These symptoms are associated with many of the negative outcomes of dementia including hospitalizations, increased placement in nursing homes, caregiver stress, depression lost income and decreased quality of life. The most common way to handle dementia-related behaviors is by using psychiatric medications like antipsychotics. There are often more effective and safer ways to manage behaviors, but caregivers lack access to learning these strategies. Family caregivers are in desperate need of help. While a good number of scientific trials have found that caregiver training is highly effective, most caregivers don't have access to or time to attend such programs. Seeing this “translation gap”, Drs. Kales, Gitlin and Lyketsos spent more than a year in a National Institute of Nursing Research funded R01 working with family caregivers themselves to see what they wanted in a dementia care tool. The WeCareAdvisor™ uses the DICE approach, a systematic approach created by Kales, Gitlin and Lyketsos. The DICE approach is intended to guide caregivers through a reasoning process that determines the context of behaviors and then provides tailored strategies aimed at reducing problem behaviors like agitation, aggression, depression, anxiety, and wandering while also reducing caregiver stress. In this symposium, the investigators will present: 1) information describing the creation of the WeCareAdvisor™ tool; 2) results from the randomized controlled trial of 60 caregiver-person with dementia dyads; and 3) “lessons learned” to be used going forward in the next version of the tool.

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