Physiotherapeutic intervention to promote self-care: exploratory study on Spanish caregivers of patients with dementia

Abstract

The caregivers of dependent persons should benefit from social-health interventions that empower them. Physiotherapists can play an important role as facilitators of self-care learning by boosting the mind-body interaction. The aim of this study was to analyse the efficacy of a physiotherapeutic intervention centered on the promotion of self-care within a sample of caregivers, members of four Spanish Associations of Relative of Alzheimer's and other dementias. To fulfill the study goal, a pre-experimental study was developed with two different groups. Group 1 participated in four training sessions based exclusively on the communication of information and which addressed, among other aspects, the most frequent health problems in caregivers and the powerful role of self-care to face such problems. Group 2 received the same theoretical information as group 1, followed by 10 sessions of practical training in several concrete strategies of body-mind self-care. The results obtained support the usefulness of combining theoretical and practical training in mind-body strategies (relaxation, self-massage and stretching), as such combination managed to favor their implication to self-care and certain dimensions of psychological well-being, while attenuating the burden. Conversely, training based solely on theoretical approaches was not beneficial. Besides evidencing the usefulness of combining passive and active methodologies to favor self-care, the data provided calls for greater consideration of aspects close to philosophical perspectives like personal growth.

Keywords: caregivers; intervention program; psychological well-being; self-care.