Mobile App Psychological Interventions for Family Dementia Caregivers

NCT ID: NCT05253443

Last Updated: 2025-05-16

Basic Information

• Recruitment Status: COMPLETED
• Clinical Phase: NA
• Total Enrollment: 135 participants
• Study Classification: INTERVENTIONAL
• Study Start Date: 2024-01-05
• Study Completion Date: 2025-02-15

Brief Summary

Family caregivers of persons with dementia often experience chronic stress and insomnia, resulting in decreased mental and physical health. Accessibility of in-person stress reduction therapy is limited due to caregiver time constraints and distance from therapy sites. The goal of this study is to address gaps in the literature regarding smartphone delivery of Mentalizing Imagery Therapy to older adult caregivers. Mentalizing Imagery Therapy (MIT) provides mindfulness and guided imagery tools to reduce stress, promote self and other understanding, and increase feelings of interconnectedness. This study aims to determine the clinical effects of App-delivered caregiver skills with MIT (experimental condition) or without MIT (control condition) on caregivers' perceived stress (primary outcome), as well as develop digital phenotypes of participant behaviors that are associated with clinical/psychological outcomes. Hypotheses include the following: at the 8 week timepoint, caregivers receiving MIT+CS-App will exhibit superiority on psychological outcome measures relative to those receiving CS-App alone (perceived stress being the primary outcome), that overall app usage will mediate improvements in perceived stress, and that the beneficial effects of the MIT+CS-App will remain significant at the 24-week follow-up.

Detailed Description

According to the World Health Organization, more than 50 million people have Alzheimer's disease (AD) and AD-related disorders (AD/ADRD), with most individuals receiving care from their family members. The stress and burden of caregiving negatively affects caregivers' mental health, with a high proportion reporting elevated levels of depression, insomnia, stress, poorer cognitive outcomes, and anxiety. To promote caregiver wellbeing, previous research has focused on providing skills for behavioral management of the person living with dementia, support and psychoeducational groups to help caregivers learn from each others' experiences, group cognitive behavioral therapy or mindfulness techniques, or combinations of these. A common limitation of most trials of group therapies for family caregivers is that delivery of the intervention occurs in person. In-person delivery requires participant travel, could necessitate costly substitute caregiving, necessitates large resources in terms of meeting space and personnel, and is less acceptable for older adults during the COVID-19 pandemic. In person groups thus suffer from a common drawback of scaling the intervention to assure widespread feasibility and dissemination.

This is a randomized, controlled trial of smartphone App delivered Mentalizing Imagery Therapy (MIT) to augment caregiver skills training. MIT is a "second generation" mindfulness therapy, which couples mindful practice to reduce emotional arousal with psychological principles designed to balance mentalizing. Mindfulness refers to non-judgmental, present focused attention and has been found to reduce depressive and anxious symptoms in community and clinical populations. In MIT, mindfulness is instantiated in gentle stretching and meditative exercises. Mentalizing refers to understanding the mental processes of self and others, and their links to observable behaviors within complex interpersonal situations. In MIT, guided imagery exercises consist of participants imagining their own and others' perspectives and reactions, and the connectedness between self and other. Pilot studies have utilized 4-week group MIT for family AD/ADRD caregivers and found promising benefits for alleviating psychological symptoms of caregiver depression and anxiety, increasing perceived mental well-being and relationship quality. Smartphone delivery of MIT has been shown to be acceptable for family dementia caregivers in a feasibility trial. By increasing mentalizing while providing caregiver skills, the experimental intervention could result in synergism that enables the caregiver to better implement caregiving skills in their unique interpersonal context.

Conditions

Family Caregivers

Study Design

• Allocation Method: RANDOMIZED
• Intervention Model: PARALLEL
• Primary Study Purpose: TREATMENT
• Blinding Strategy: SINGLE

Study Groups

Mentalizing Imagery Therapy and caregiver skills mobile application

Group Type: EXPERIMENTAL

Mentalizing Imagery Therapy and caregiver skills mobile application

Intervention Type: BEHAVIORAL

8-week long mobile application intervention course including caregiver skills training and Mentalizing Imagery Therapy techniques with optional weekly group meetings.

Caregiver skills mobile application

Group Type: ACTIVE_COMPARATOR

Caregiver skills mobile application

Intervention Type: BEHAVIORAL

8-week long mobile application intervention course including caregiver skills training with optional weekly group meetings.

Interventions

Mentalizing Imagery Therapy and caregiver skills mobile application

8-week long mobile application intervention course including caregiver skills training and Mentalizing Imagery Therapy techniques with optional weekly group meetings.

Intervention Type: BEHAVIORAL

Caregiver skills mobile application

8-week long mobile application intervention course including caregiver skills training with optional weekly group meetings.

Intervention Type: BEHAVIORAL

Eligibility Criteria

Inclusion Criteria

• Primary caregiver for a relative with dementia (self-identified)
• Age ≥ 50 years*
• Must carry and use a smartphone on a regular basis (at least 5 days per week)
• Fluent in the English language

Exclusion Criteria

• Active psychosis or mania
• Suicide attempt in the past 6 months or current suicidal intent
• Cognitive impairment (Mini Mental Status Examination < 26 (48))
• Unstable medical illness or planned major surgery
• Substance use disorder in the past six months
• Mindfulness or guided imagery practice more than once per week in the past three months

• After the first 60 participants had been recruited for the study, it was determined that goals for a representative racial and ethnic sample had not been met. We therefore sought and received approval from NIH to lower the eligibility age to 50 and over.

• Minimum Eligible Age: 50 Years
• Eligible Sex: ALL
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: Yes

Sponsors

National Institute on Aging (NIA)

NIH

Sponsor Role: collaborator

Massachusetts General Hospital

OTHER

Sponsor Role: lead

Responsible Party

Felipe A Jain

Principal Investigator

Responsibility Role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR

Principal Investigators

Felipe A Jain, MD

Role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR

Massachusetts General Hospital

Locations

Massachusetts General Hospital

Boston, Massachusetts, United States

Countries

United States

References

Jain FA, Chernyak S, Nickerson L, Abrams M, Iacoboni M, Christov-Moore L, Connolly CG, Fisher LB, Sakurai H, Bentley K, Tan E, Pittman M, Lavretsky H, Leuchter AF. Mentalizing imagery therapy for depressed family dementia caregivers: Feasibility, clinical outcomes and brain connectivity changes. J Affect Disord Rep. 2021 Jul;5:100155. doi: 10.1016/j.jadr.2021.100155. Epub 2021 May 29.

Reference Type: BACKGROUND

PMID: 34498016 (View on PubMed)

Sikder AT, Yang FC, Schafer R, Dowling GA, Traeger L, Jain FA. Mentalizing Imagery Therapy Mobile App to Enhance the Mood of Family Dementia Caregivers: Feasibility and Limited Efficacy Testing. JMIR Aging. 2019 Mar 21;2(1):e12850. doi: 10.2196/12850.

Reference Type: BACKGROUND

PMID: 31518275 (View on PubMed)

Other Identifiers

K76AG064390

Identifier Type: NIH

Identifier Source: secondary_id

View Link

2020P001319

Identifier Type: -

Identifier Source: org_study_id