Online Video Group Counselling for Family Caregivers of Persons with Dementia – an Ongoing Randomized Controlled Trial
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background With more than 40 million patients worldwide dementia represents a major challenge on societies and the affected families. Caring for a spouse or parent with dementia at home is an arduous task often associated with physical and emotional exhaustion. Local support options for family caregivers in Germany usually focus on the dissemination of information rather than emotional support. Moreover, the utilization of such services is often not feasible in everyday life due to the caregivers’ limited time resources, putting online interventions in the focus of interest. Despite the pioneering work of a Canadian research project (Marziali & Garcia, 2011) there still is limited knowledge whether online interventions can successfully be used by this elderly target group. Objective The aim of our study is to develop and test an online group intervention for family caregivers of persons with dementia. We want to find out whether the program is accepted by the caregivers and whether it helps them to reduce their subjective care related burden. Methods We developed a psychologically guided and evidence based online group counselling intervention (“Demenz anders sehen [Demas] / A different view on dementia”). Demas consists of ten weekly group sessions of 90 min which are facilitated by a psychologist and hosted in the video-chatroom of the program. Participants are randomly assigned to two study groups: members of the intervention group can start into the program right away, while members of the control group have to wait for three months before they can enter the program. Follow-ups are conducted 3, 6 and 12 months after randomization. Main outcomes are the subjective burden of caregiving according to the Berlin Inventory of Caregiver Burden - Dementia (BIZA-D, Zank, Schacke & Leipold, 2006) and the satisfaction with one's own performance as a caregiver according to the Sense of Competence Questionnaire (SCQ, Scholte op Reimer, 1998). Results Until now, 29 Persons were included in the study, with a mean age of M=59.4 yrs (SD=10.7; range 33 to 83 yrs.), female participants make up the majority (69%). 48% care for their spouse, 52% care for a parent. According to PHQ-9, 28% of participants are affected by major depressive disorder. Although no follow up data is yet available, process data shows that all participants so far could successfully utilize the program. Conclusions First experiences suggest that elderly caregivers can successfully be engaged in an internet based group counselling intervention. Follow-up-data will shed light on its effectiveness. First results shall be presented. []
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.004 | 0.002 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.010 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".