Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia for the Dementia Caregiving Dyad

Up to 71% of the persons living with dementia (PLwD) and 70% of their caregivers experience sleep disturbances, which are distressing for both the PLwD and their caregivers. Specifically, PLwD often experience restlessness and fragmented sleep, which in turn can affect caregivers' sleep patterns leading to multiple nightly awakenings, shorter sleep duration, and/or inconsistent sleep-wake times. These disturbances increase the risk for a myriad of psychological, cognitive, behavioral, and physiological health issues and poor quality of life for the dyad. Given the interdependence of the dyadic sleep disturbances and the negative health consequences of sleep disturbances on the dyad, there is a critical need to develop and provide effective interventions to improve their sleep. Pharmacologic treatment often results in potential harmful side effects like falls and cognitive decline; therefore, non-pharmacologic approaches are recommended for this population.

Cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBTi), a non-pharmacologic intervention that has demonstrated effectiveness for improving sleep disturbances in multiple populations, is delivered in various formats including face-to-face and videoconferencing. Individually, PLwD and caregivers have successfully deployed behavioral sleep techniques, resulting in improved sleep quality. However, there is no current published research on CBTi completed simultaneously by the PLwD-caregiver dyad, and that is exactly what the researchers of this study seek to do with early-stage individuals and their caregivers. The researchers premise this effort on the notion that a dyadic intervention can use early-stage individuals' retained capacity for communication and comprehension to establish in-the-moment agreements about strategies the caregiver can employ to enact and facilitate positive sleep behaviors in the PLwD and to pair that with acquired strategies to engender his/her own positive sleep behaviors.

This project seeks to gather formative and preliminary data on CBTi delivered simultaneously to the PLwD-caregiver dyad. The researchers will use a quantitative, descriptive approach to determine the feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary efficacy of a 4-session CBTi intervention administered to 40 PLwD-caregiver dyads via videoconferencing sessions who will receive the intervention as a unit. Objective and subjective sleep, depressive symptoms, and cognitive health data will be collected at baseline, and 1 week and 3 months post-completion of the intervention.

In community-dwelling PLwD and their caregivers where both persons in the dyad self-report sleep disturbances, the specific aims for this study are:

1. Assess the feasibility of a video conferencing dyad-based CBTi intervention.
2. Evaluate the acceptability of a video conferencing dyad-based CBTi intervention.
3. Examine the preliminary efficacy of video conferencing CBTi intervention on sleep quality outcomes including sleep efficiency and perceived sleep quality.