Style and Substance: Characterizing Dementia Caregiving Styles and Associated Biopsychosocial and Health Services Utilization Outcomes

随着阿尔茨海默氏症和其他形式的与年龄相关的痴呆症患者的数量不断增加，数百万人 美国的成年人正在扮演这些人的照顾者的角色。超越现有工作范围 在压力过程模型中，这项工作的目的是确定照顾者负性心理和 通过考虑痴呆症研究不足的领域，生理结果和卫生服务利用率的增加 照顾方式。痴呆症照护方式可以由认知信念、改变的准备程度和行为方式来定义 痴呆症治疗策略。这个辅导式职业发展奖旨在结合一个专注于 研究、指导和教学，使候选人的成长朝着成为独立人士的长期目标迈进 研究人员侧重于描述与精神健康和痴呆症健康结果相关的因素 以及制定和传播针对独特照料方式的干预措施。的目标 拟议的培训计划是：1)通过以下方式获得对痴呆症患者及其家人的护理挑战 观察临床接触；2)增加生物标记物收集、分析和统计的方法学知识 方法论和潜在类别分析；以及3)获得开发、实施和评估未来行为的技能 利用照顾方式的干预措施在提案期间得到了改进。培训目标旨在发展 应聘者作为老年精神卫生服务研究人员的潜力与该研究密切相关，目的是：1) 痴呆症照顾者认知功能的混合方法评估 信念，改变的准备，以及痴呆症治疗的行为策略。半结构定性 访谈和潜在阶层分析将被用来确定这些措施如何在不同的照顾风格中聚集在一起。 2)通过压力过程、心理健康、 护理方式对卫生服务的利用。3)最后，探索性目标将考虑 6个月以上的照顾方式。预期的结果将显著增加对艾滋病高危人群的了解 照顾者将受益于针对这些不同的照看方式量身定做的干预措施，从而改善 年龄相关性痴呆症患者及其照顾者的结果。

As the number of individuals with Alzheimer's disease and other forms of age-related dementia is increasing, millions of adults in the United States are taking on the role of caregiver for these individuals. Extending beyond existing work within the Stress Process Model, this work aims to identify caregivers at highest risk for negative psychological and physiological outcomes and increased health services utilization, by considering the understudied area of dementia caregiving styles. Dementia caregiving style may be defined by cognitive beliefs, readiness to change, and behavioral strategies toward dementia management. This mentored career development award aims to combine a program of focused research, mentorship, and didactics to enable the candidate's growth toward a long-term goal of becoming an independent researcher focused on the delineation of factors associated with the mental health and health outcomes of dementia caregivers, and developing and disseminating interventions targeted toward unique caregiving styles. Aims of the proposed training plan are to: 1) gain exposure to care challenges for persons with dementia and their families through observation of clinical encounters; 2) increase methodological knowledge of biomarker collection, assays, and statistical methodology, and latent class analysis; and 3) acquire skills to develop, implement, and evaluate future behavioral interventions utilizing the caregiving styles advanced during the proposal. The training objectives seek to develop the candidate's potential as a geriatric mental health services researcher and align closely with the research aims to: 1) characterize caregiving-style typologies through the mixed-methods assessment of dementia caregivers on cognitive beliefs, readiness to change, and behavioral strategies toward dementia management. Semi-structured qualitative interviews and latent-class analysis will be used to determine how these measures cluster within distinct caregiving styles. 2) Define high-risk groups of caregivers by the association of biomarkers of the stress process, psychological well-being, and health services utilization with caregiving styles. 3) Finally, an exploratory aim will consider the mutability of caregiving styles over 6 months. The expected results would significantly increase understanding of high-risk groups of caregivers which would benefit from interventions tailored toward these distinct caregiving styles, thereby improving outcomes for both people with age-related dementia and their caregivers.