Improving caregiver well-being delays nursing home placement of patients with Alzheimer disease.

OBJECTIVE: To determine the effectiveness of a counseling and support intervention for spouse caregivers in delaying time to nursing home placement of patients with Alzheimer disease (AD), and identify the mechanisms through which the intervention accomplished this goal.

METHODS: We conducted a randomized controlled trial of an enhanced counseling and support intervention compared to usual care. Participants were a referred volunteer sample of 406 spouse caregivers of community-dwelling patients who had enrolled in the study over a 9.5-year period. The intervention consisted of six sessions of individual and family counseling, support group participation, and continuous availability of ad hoc telephone counseling. Structured questionnaires were administered at baseline and at regular follow-up intervals, every 4 months for the first year and every 6 months thereafter. Cox proportional hazard models were used to test the effects of the intervention on the time to nursing home placement for the patients after controlling for multiple time-invariant and time-dependent predictors of placement.

RESULTS: Patients whose spouses received the intervention experienced a 28.3% reduction in the rate of nursing home placement compared with usual care controls (hazard ratio = 0.717 after covariate adjustment, p = 0.025). The difference in model-predicted median time to placement was 557 days. Improvements in caregivers' satisfaction with social support, response to patient behavior problems, and symptoms of depression collectively accounted for 61.2% of the intervention's beneficial impact on placement.

CONCLUSION: Greater access to effective programs of counseling and support could yield considerable benefits for caregivers, patients with Alzheimer disease, and society.