Grant: Project Grant - PA: Patient-Oriented Research: Early-Career Investigator

Family and friend caregivers, two-thirds of whom are women, play an essential role in supporting the 500,000 Canadians living with dementia. Interventions are available to improve the quality of life and mental health outcomes (e.g. burden or depression) of family and friend caregivers (e.g. exercise, peer support program, psychotherapy, education, respite care); however, many interventions have not been directly compared in randomized trials. This makes it challenging for caregivers, clinicians, and policymakers to know which interventions will work best to improve these outcomes for family and friend caregivers. We will review the literature and identify all randomized trials describing the efficacy of in person and virtual interventions (e.g. by telephone or videoconference) for improving quality of life and symptoms of burden, distress, depression, anxiety, and loneliness for family and friend caregivers of persons living with dementia. This will be the first study of its kind to understand which interventions for family and friend caregivers of persons living with dementia will work the best and how these interventions might better support caregivers. We will identify interventions that will work better for different groups of family and friend caregivers (e.g. older women, older men). This work will support the feasible implementation of evidence-informed in person and virtual interventions that are tailored to the needs of family and friend caregivers during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.