Sleep: Effect on Dementia Caregiver Mastery, Perceived Stress & Depression

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The broad, long-term objective of this research is to improve the health outcomes of informal caregivers of persons with dementia PWD so they are able to successfully continue providing care. This is important research because the demand for informal caregiving of PWD will continue to grow as our population ages. The experience of caregiving is stressful and often results in negative outcomes for the caregiver such as depression or physical decline. Depletion of personal/physical resources results in institutionalization of the PWD. Caregivers need resources to meet the demands of caregiving. Two of these resources are adequate sleep and mastery which is the sense of control and efficacy they feel they exert over forces that are important in their lives. Both sleep quality and mastery have an inverse relationship with depression but there is limited research on the relationship of mastery and perceived stress, or how sleep impacts mastery in relation to depression and perceived stress. The specific aims of this research are to 1) test the relationship between sleep quality, mastery, perceived global stress, and depression and 2) explore the direct and indirect effect of sleep quality on mastery and perceived stress; mastery and depression. Further understanding of these relationships can lead to development of targeted interventions to improve sleep quality and mastery in order to prevent negative outcomes. This is consistent with the National Institute of Nursing Research's mission to prevent or delay disease and disability, and to promote healthy lifestyles. The research design will be a non-experimental repeated measure. Data will be collected at baseline, week 4 and week 8 to observe the dynamic experience of caregiving stress. Instruments used will include demographic data and the Dementia Severity Rating Scale to analyze confounding variables of gender and the caregiver's perception of PWD status, the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index, Pearlin's mastery scale; Center for Epidemiolgical Studies Depression Scale, and Cohen's Perceived Stress Scale. Analysis will consist of testing correlations and multiple regression resulting in a path analysis. The relevance of this research is the alignment with two major public health issues, caregiving and sleep quality. Our society is dependent on the success of informal caregiving evidenced by specific legislation in the Older Americans Act targeting caregiver support. Sleep disorders and sleep deprivation experienced by caregivers are recognized as an unmet public health problem by the Committee on Sleep Medicine and Research from the Institute of Medicine in 2006.