Family caregivers of people with dementia experience high levels of stress and are at risk for physical and mental health illness. The provision of support services for American Indian family dementia caregivers living in the Pacific Northwest is still at the incipient stage in spite of the growing, unmet need for these services. There have been very few CAM interventions for family caregivers investigated and virtually no biofield/touch therapies. Polarity Therapy (PT) is a CAM biofield/touch therapy modality that is culturally congruent with both American Indian and non-Indian populations in the Northwest and is currently used by people of all ages to decrease stress, anxiety and depression, reduce pain and improve health function and the quality of life. The goal of this proposal is to evaluate the feasibility of Polarity Therapy as a caregiver intervention using objective and subjective measures.
The specific aims of this proposal are to 1) test the hypothesis that caregivers receiving Polarity Therapy experience reduced levels of stress, as compared to control subjects. Stress levels will be measured by indices of adrenal stress responses (Cortisol, DHEA, Circadian rhythm), heart rate variability (HRV) and the perceived stress scale (PSS). 2) To test the hypothesis that caregivers receiving PT will experience a greater reduction of depression and anxiety, as compared to the control group using the Penn State Worry Questionnaire, CES-D and the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index. 3) To test the hypothesis that caregivers receiving Polarity Therapy will experience an improvement in quality of life, as compared to the control group measured by a Health Status Questionnaire (HSQ), a caregivers Quality of Life-Alzheimer's Dementia scale, a thematic qualitative analysis of clinical narratives and a blind clinical assessment by a physician and medical assistant. This study will randomize 40 caregivers into intervention and active placebo (respite coverage recipient). The Intervention group will receive eight 50 minute PT sessions once each weak over 8 weeks. The active placebo group will receive three hours of respite coverage each week for eight weeks. Two baseline measures will be collected one week apart, with self-reports again at 4 weeks and all measures post-intervention at 8 weeks. This investigation will provide preliminary clinical data upon which to formulate a more comprehensive clinical trial of Polarity Therapy. The utilization of Polarity Therapy as an intervention strategy for American Indian and non-Indian family dementia caregivers may provide a significant response to a growing public health problem.
| Korn, Leslie; Logsdon, Rebecca G; Polissar, Nayak L et al. (2009) A randomized trial of a CAM therapy for stress reduction in American Indian and Alaskan Native family caregivers. Gerontologist 49:368-77 |
