"I've learned to just go with the flow": Family caregivers' strategies for managing behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia.

Background/objectives:: Behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia (BPSD) are highly prevalent, stressful, and challenging to manage. Caregivers’ approaches for handling these behaviors have implications for both care partners’ well-being. Yet the specific strategies that caregivers use in their daily management of BPSD are relatively unknown.

Effect of the WeCareAdvisor™ on family caregiver outcomes in dementia: a pilot randomized controlled trial.

Background: Behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia (BPSD) are universal and associated with multiple negative outcomes. This pilot randomized controlled trial (RCT) evaluated the effect of using the WeCareAdvisor, an innovative web-based tool developed to enable family caregivers to assess, manage, and track BPSD.

Methods: This RCT enrolled 57 dementia family caregivers from community and clinical settings in Ann Arbor, Michigan and Baltimore, Maryland.

"The Filter is Kind of Broken": Family Caregivers' Attributions About Behavioral and Psychological Symptoms of Dementia.

Objectives: Behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia (BPSD) are common, often challenging to manage, and may erode caregivers' well-being. Few studies have explored caregivers' perspectives of what causes these behaviors, but such attributions may be important-particularly if they negatively impact the care dyad. This study examined causal attributions about BPSD among individuals caring for a family member with dementia.

A randomized trial of a web-based platform to help families manage dementia-related behavioral symptoms: The WeCareAdvisor™.

Dementia-related behavioral symptoms are challenging clinical features occurring across etiologies and disease progression. They are associated with increased healthcare utilization, nursing home placement, family upset and burden. Families typically manage behavioral symptoms without requisite knowledge, skills and guidance.

Antipsychotic Use and Physical Morbidity in Parkinson Disease.

Objective: To determine if antipsychotic (AP) use in Parkinson disease (PD) patients is associated with increased physical morbidity.

Methods: Veterans Health Administration data (1999-2010) was used to examine physical morbidity risk associated with AP use in idiopathic PD patients with stable recent physical health. We compared 180-day morbidity rates in patients initiating an AP with matched non-AP users who survived for 180 days (matched on age, sex, race, index year, presence and duration of dementia, PD duration, delirium, hospitalization, Charlson Comorbidity Index, and new non-psychiatric medications; covarying for psychosis).

Getting what they need when they need it. Identifying barriers to information needs of family caregivers to manage dementia-related behavioral symptoms.

Background: Consumer health informatics (CHI) such as web-based applications may provide the platform for enabling the over 15 million family caregivers of patients with Alzheimer's Disease or related dementias the information they need when they need it to support behavioral symptom management. However, for CHI to be successful, it is necessary that it be designed to meet the specific information needs of family caregivers in the context in which caregiving occurs. A sociotechnical systems approach to CHI design can help to understand the contextual complexities of family caregiving and account for those complexities in the design of CHI for family caregivers.

WeCareAdvisor™: The Development of a Caregiver-focused, Web-based Program to Assess and Manage Behavioral and Psychological Symptoms of Dementia.

Background/objectives: Behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia (BPSD) are nearly universal in dementia and associated with multiple negative outcomes. Current real-world management is largely pharmacologic, despite poor risk/benefit. The WeCareAdvisor was designed to enable family caregivers to assess, manage, and track BPSD using nonpharmacologic strategies.

Association of Antipsychotic Use With Mortality Risk in Patients With Parkinson Disease.

Importance: As many as 60% of patients with Parkinson disease (PD) experience psychosis, 80% develop dementia, and the use of antipsychotics (APs) in the population with PD is common. The use of APs by patients with dementia in the general population is associated with increased mortality, but whether this risk extends to patients with PD remains unknown.

Objective: To determine whether AP use in patients with PD is associated with increased mortality.