Mindfulness-based Cognitive Coping Mobile App Intervention for caregivers of individuals with Alzheimer's Disease

Project Summary Alzheimer's Disease (AD) is a devastating illness for patients, families, and society. Most of the care of AD patients rests on shoulders of informal caregivers, largely untrained to undertake the caregiving role, bearing a high level of distress, and suffering deterioration in physical health and psychological well-being. There are over 16 million Americans providing care to AD patients, experiencing high rates of depressive symptoms (30%), stress (59%), associated risks for cardiovascular diseases, and many other adverse health effects. For example, in separate studies, hospitalization and emergency department visits were more likely for dementia caregivers than any other types of caregivers. The severity of AD caregiving is influenced by several factors, such as intensity of dementia symptoms in AD patients, how challenging distressful situations are perceived by caregivers, and available resources. Although information and programs about Alzheimer's Disease are available to the public, an essential missing tool is how to deal with depressive symptoms in an effective manner, as they are very common and demanding. Therefore, in this Phase II project, we propose to complete the new Mindfulness-based Cognitive Coping (MCC) intervention, and enable easy access with our mobile app, called Caring Mind App (CMA), providing an effective cost-effective intervention for caregivers to reduce their stress and depressive symptoms. The MCC intervention is built upon the Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT), which has been effective to treat individuals with major depressive disorder, with the integration of caregiving coping strategies from our past studies to help caregivers to overcome stressful situations in their caregiver role. Innovation: (1) integration of MBCT with caregiving coping in a mobile app; (2) anonymous sharing of real responses and techniques used by caregivers; and (3) automated content update through an advanced “crowdsourcing” of caregiving knowledge (after “curation” by project personnel) to promote best practices. Phase I demonstrated the feasibility, met all milestones, and provided evidence to support the concept (MCC in app format). AD caregivers were able to use the Caring Mind mobile App and accepted it very well. In fact, besides demonstrating usability, acceptance and perceived benefits, Phase I study showed significant positive outcomes for caregivers on reducing their depressive symptoms and psychological stress. In Phase II, we will finalize the MCC curriculum, develop the complete app, and evaluate its effectiveness in a randomized clinical trial; resulting in a novel intervention that integrates MCC content, aggregation of community shared experience, effective training to reduce depressive symptoms and psychological stress, and a mobile app to be deployed to millions of families struggling with Alzheimer's Disease. Commercial Opportunity: MCC program will be available to AD caregivers (16+ Million people in US) as a mobile app subscription. This model has been very successful with our current mobile apps in App Stores.