In Ireland over 26,000 people with dementia live in the community. Current health care strategies are insufficient to cope with this. New ways of improving outcomes for people with dementia are needed. Resilience focuses on personal attributes and external assets and one’s ability to use these resources to bounce back in the face of adversity. However resilience theory has not been used to underpin therapeutic interventions for people with dementia. Using Windle’s framework we hypothesised that a resilience building intervention could only be effective if it simultaneously targeted the individual, community and society. We reviewed the literature, consulted with experts in resilience and dementia, including people with dementia and carers, we identified four relevant previously evaluated single interventions. We combined these single interventions to create a novel Comprehensive Resilience-building psychosocial Intervention (CREST).
Aim: To confirm and finalise CREST and undertake a pilot in advance of evaluation in an RCT.
We will:
Finalize CREST data collection tools and outcome measures.
Assess the feasibility and acceptability of study procedures (e.g. recruitment, data collection methods, fidelity assessment) and intervention (content and delivery).
Pilot data collection tools.
Estimate recruitment, retention and follow up rates, as well as baseline and variance levels of the trial primary outcome to facilitate sample size calculations. Estimate timeframe and resources required.
Methods:
We will pilot CREST in 2 general practices. Data will be collected at baseline and 16 weeks post intervention.
Quantitative data will be collected on primary and secondary outcome measures, recruitment and retention, details on delivery of, and participation in CREST and treatment fidelity.
Qualitative interviews will be conducted with carers and people with dementia to understand better their experience of participating in CREST.
The final CREST components and RCT protocol will be established based on this work.
