EFFICACY OF GROUP PSYCHOTHERAPY FOR CAREGIVERS OF DEMENTIA PATIENTS

Abstract

In the field of dementia, growing evidence of non-pharmacologic therapy for the patients has been emerged; however, studies focusing on supporting their caregiver's mental stress are limited. Group psychotherapy has originally developed among psychology/psychiatry field, aiming the patients’ mutual interaction and communication, together with clinical psychologists and practitioners. It is unclear whether the applicability and the efficacy of this type of psychotherapy for caregivers of dementia patients. Therefore, we had started up the group psychotherapy team in 2007 including psychiatrist, nurse and clinical psychologist, and have continued to provide this therapy for a decade. The scheme of our group psychotherapy consists of mixture of counseling, psychoeducation and family association. The purpose of this study was to examine the efficacy of group psychotherapy. We recruited the caregivers of dementia patients who agreed with the informed consent with respect to the concept of this therapy and the purpose of this study. All individuals had been aware that they had some stresses in daily care of the patients at the enrollment. Our group psychotherapy was registration-based, biweekly 60 minutes five sessions. To assess the efficacy, the endpoint was determined as the score change between the initial and the last assessment of the series of psychological tests using Japanese version of Profile of Mood States-Brief (POMS), Self-rating Depression Scale (SDS) and Zarit Caregiver Burden Interview (ZBI). 142 caregivers (126 female (89%), mean age 60.7±11.5 years) were included in this study. In POMS, the tension-anxiety and fatigue were tend to be higher. For POMS and SDS, score change from the initial and the last assessment were not significantly different. By contrast, ZBI score decreased significantly (p <0.01) after five sessions. Regarding gender difference, there was no male dominancy among POMS, SDS and ZBI scores, although the sample size was small. The present study indicates that our present group psychotherapy could specifically ease the care burden of dementia caregivers. To compensate the potential problem such as hesitation for attending seen among males, the scheme should be updated continuously.