Dementia Clinical Trials

Experimental: COPE Intervention Group

COPE is a 6-week group-based programme comprising one face-to-face workshop (4 caregivers per group) and five online sessions (4 caregivers per group) delivered via Zoom. The COPE programme integrates the strategies from cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), emotional-focused mindfulness therapy and social skill training to improve the expressed emotion (EE) of the caregivers, with the focus to ameliorate negative causal attrition of BPSD, increase emotional regulation and enhance social interaction skills with PwD. The group size of 4 is used to optimize the social interactions between the peer caregivers. The first session will adopt a face-to-face mode to better develop their rapport with each other, and to facilitate their self-reflection and disclosure on their social interaction with the care recipients in day-to-day caregiving.

Active_comparator: Control group

Structured education will function as the control intervention to mitigate potential confounding effects attributable to additional attention. The control condition will comprise one initial face-to-face session followed by five consecutive weekly online educational sessions focusing on dementia caregiving. These sessions will be administered by a research assistant (RA2) following a standardized PowerPoint presentation developed in accordance with established clinical practice guidelines. The implementation of an active control condition, rather than a passive or waitlist control, provides more robust evidence regarding the specific efficacy of the experimental intervention. Furthermore, this approach enhances both participant recruitment and retention rates by ensuring that all participants receive a credible and potentially beneficial intervention.