Objective: To understand how caregiver health status influences response to a peer mentoring intervention in caregivers of individuals with Lewy Body Dementia (LBD).

Background: Caregiving demands can limit caregivers’ ability to care for themselves and attend to their own health needs.[1] Poor caregiver health also increases vulnerability to the psychological effects of caregiving.[2] LBD is the second most common neurodegenerative dementia with many patients heavily relying on informal caregivers, [3] and peer mentoring has been shown to be a feasible and efficacious intervention in LBD caregivers.[4] We hypothesize that caregiver health status moderates their response to a peer mentoring intervention in LBD caregivers.

Method: We piloted a 16-week peer mentoring intervention with experienced LBD caregivers (mentors) providing support and knowledge to less experienced LBD caregivers (mentees) through weekly calls. Recruited mentors completed a virtual mentor training and were then systematically matched with mentees based on their preferences. We assessed within-subject change in LBD knowledge, attitudes towards dementia, and mastery from baseline to post-training (mentors only) and to post-intervention and conducted moderation analyses with caregiver health status.

Results: Thirty matched dyads completed 16 weeks of peer mentoring. We found that 75% of mentees and 66% of mentors reported 1+ health conditions (range 1-4). Age significantly correlated with the number of health issues in mentors (R=.475; p=.003) but not in mentees (R=.326; p=.069). Mentees with health issues showed greater improvement in LBD knowledge from baseline to post-intervention than healthy caregivers (p=.039). Mentors with health issues showed a smaller reduction in mastery from pre- to post-training than healthy caregivers (p=.042). A higher number of mentor health conditions was associated with greater change (p=.016) in attitudes towards dementia from baseline to post-training.

Conclusion: Caregivers with health issues in our study showed greater improvement in outcomes than healthy caregivers, suggesting they gained more from the mentor training and/or peer mentoring intervention. These caregivers may also be more connected to healthcare and community resources, thus can engage those resources and LBD knowledge to the benefit of their care recipients.

References: 1. Sullivan AB, Miller D. Who is Taking Care of the Caregiver? J Patient Exp. 2015;2(1):7-12.
2. Zanetti O, Frisoni GB, Bianchetti A, Tamanza G, Cigoli V, Trabucchi M. Depressive symptoms of Alzheimer caregivers are mainly due to personal rather than patient factors. Int J Geriatr Psychiatry. 1998;13(6):358-367.
3. Zweig YR, Galvin JE. Lewy body dementia: the impact on patients and caregivers. Alzheimers Res Ther. 2014;6(2):21.
4. Akram F, Hess S, Levin M, et al. Learning to PERSEVERE: Feasibility and Efficacy of Peer Mentor Support and Caregiver Education in Lewy Body Dementia (P18-3.001). Neurology. 2022;98(18 Supplement):1747.

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MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/health-status-of-lewy-body-dementia-caregivers-predicts-psychological-response-to-peer-mentoring-intervention/