IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ehl/lserod/59966.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

START (STrAtegies for RelaTives) study: a pragmatic randomised controlled trial to determine the clinical effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of a manual-based coping strategy programme in promoting the mental health of carers of people with dementia

Author

Listed:
  • Livingston, Gill
  • Barber, Julie
  • Rapaport, Penny
  • Knapp, Martin
  • Griffin, Mark
  • Romeo, Renee
  • King, Derek
  • Livingston, Debbie
  • Lewis-Holmes, Elanor
  • Mummery, Cath
  • Walker, Zuzana
  • Hoe, Juanita
  • Cooper, Claudia

Abstract

The frequency of dementia is rising as people live longer, meaning that there are more people with dementia, two-thirds of whom are cared for at home by their families. About 40% of those family carers of people with dementia have clinically significant depression or anxiety, often leading to them becoming unable to care so that the person with dementia has to be looked after in a care home. Although there have been some interventions which help reduce family carers’ depression and anxiety, they have neither been designed to be used routinely in the NHS nor had their cost-effectiveness tested. Our START (STrAtegies for RelaTives) study was a randomised controlled trial of an eight-session manual, adapted from an American programme called ‘Coping with Caregiving’. It was delivered by psychology graduates to carers individually. We compared it with usual treatment by using a computer program to decide randomly whether or not carers should be in the intervention or the control group. We found that START decreased carers’ anxiety and depression and improved their quality of life (QoL) in the short term (8 months after the study started) and that it was as effective on these measures in the longer term (2 years after the study started). The intervention was cost-effective at both times but did not improve the person with dementia’s QoL. After 2 years, there was a small, but not significant, decrease in the chance of people with dementia in the intervention group being admitted to a care home.

Suggested Citation

  • Livingston, Gill & Barber, Julie & Rapaport, Penny & Knapp, Martin & Griffin, Mark & Romeo, Renee & King, Derek & Livingston, Debbie & Lewis-Holmes, Elanor & Mummery, Cath & Walker, Zuzana & Hoe, Juan, 2014. "START (STrAtegies for RelaTives) study: a pragmatic randomised controlled trial to determine the clinical effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of a manual-based coping strategy programme in promoting ," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 59966, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
  • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:59966
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/59966/
    File Function: Open access version.
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Herman H. M. Lo & Alma Au & W. V. Cho & Elsa N. S. Lau & Janet Y. H. Wong & Samuel Y. S. Wong & Jerf W. K. Yeung, 2022. "Mindfulness-Based Intervention for Caregivers of Frail Older Chinese Adults: A Study Protocol," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(9), pages 1-13, April.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • J50 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor-Management Relations, Trade Unions, and Collective Bargaining - - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:59966. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: LSERO Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/lsepsuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.