Associations between caregiver mastery and anxiety in persons living with dementia: A study of dyads living in community.
Yeji Hwang, Nancy Hodgson
PMID 34256159WHAT IT FOUND
In 170 dementia-caregiver dyads, higher caregiver confidence was linked to less anxiety in the person with dementia.
Poor sleep in the person was also linked to more anxiety.
Key findings
01After accounting for age, cognitive impairment, sleep, depression and pain, higher caregiver mastery was linked to less anxiety in the person with dementia.
02After accounting for age and cognitive impairment, more sleep impairment was linked to more anxiety in the person with dementia.
03Caregivers who more often felt uncertain about what to do, or felt they should do more, were more likely to have the person they cared for present anxiety.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
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What it does not show
The study was cross-sectional, so it cannot show that caregiver mastery caused lower anxiety. It used baseline data from a trial, so it did not test the home-based activity intervention or any caregiver education programme. It was a secondary analysis, so some potentially useful information, such as caregiving hours and personality, was not available. Most participants had very mild dementia (71.8% CDR 0.5), so the findings may not apply to people with more advanced dementia. Anxiety was measured by caregiver report as present or absent, not by a clinician diagnosis.
Declared interests
The authors declared no competing interests. The publication types list NIH extramural research support.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that improving caregiver mastery will reduce anxiety in the person with dementia. This was a cross-sectional secondary analysis of baseline data, so it shows association, not cause, and it did not test an intervention.