Psychosocial telephone intervention for dementia caregivers: A randomized, controlled trial

Background: Identifying effective and accessible interventions for dementia caregivers is critical as dementia prevalence increases. Objective: Examine the effects of a telephone-based intervention on caregiver well-being. Design: Randomized, controlled trial. Setting: Academic medical center. Participants: Two hundred and fifty distressed, family, dementia caregivers. Intervention: Caregivers randomized to receive 16 telephone contacts over 6 months of either the Family Intervention: Telephone Tracking-Caregiver (FITT-C) or Telephone Support (TS). Outcome: Primary outcome variables were family caregivers' depressive symptoms, burden, and reactions to care recipients' behavior problems at 6 months. Results: The FITT-C intervention resulted in significantly improved caregiver depressive symptoms (P = .003; 27% net improvement) and less severe reactions to care-recipient depressive behaviors (P = .009; 29% net improvement) compared with the control condition (TS). Conclusion: An entirely telephone-based intervention improves caregivers' depressive symptoms and reactions to behavior problems in the care recipient and is comparable with reported results of face-to-face interventions. (C) 2015 The Alzheimer's Association. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.