A Benefit-finding Intervention for Family Caregivers of Persons with Alzheimer Disease

This research aims at developing an innovative benefit-finding program for reducing caregivers' stress by helping them find benefits in the caregiving experience. This is achieved by positive reappraisal training as well as by daily reflections of benefits over a month's duration. To evaluate this program, caregivers will be randomly assigned into one of three experimental conditions:psychoeducation;psychoeducation plus benefit finding; orsimplified psychoeducation (to serve as placebo control).Booster sessions will be provided at 14 months after initial treatment. Moreover, because caregiving is performed in a familial context, the researchers will recruit, in addition to individual caregivers, cross-generational caregivers so as to examine the feasibility and effectiveness of conjoint interventions. The outcome measures will be caregiver stress, depression, coping, social support, and physical and psychological well-being, as well as care-recipient behavioral and psychological symptoms, functional impairment and cognitive impairment, obtained at baseline (0 month), post-treatment (2 months), and 6, 12, 18 and 30 months (hence 6 waves).