Empowering Family Caregivers Through Managing Care Recipients’ Behavioral Challenges: A Qualitative Study

Objective Informal caregivers offer care outside a paid or professional capacity may completely lack the necessary knowledge and skills for dementia care. This study focused on examining the effectiveness of educational training to informal caregivers in terms of identifying positive changes. Design and Intervention: This study analyzed the effects of 24-hr home-based intervention—Program for Coping with Behavioral and Psychological Symptoms of Dementia (PCBPSD)—on the family caregivers (FCGs) of people with dementia (PWD) in Taiwan. The program included eight thematic lessons Participants: Eight FCGs were interviewed four times to identify likely positive changes in terms of reduced care burden and self-adjustment. Results Five themes identified included: (1) Reported BPSD by caregivers, (2) Encountered challenges from caregiving. (3) Barriers, (4) Gains and positive changes resulted from training programmes, and (5) Effective coping strategies. Conclusion The major challenges encountered by the FCGs not only from the problem behaviors themselves but the difficulty in pleasing care recipients and reluctance to employ foreign paid caregivers. Problem-focused strategies seem to be helpful when seeking information, such as participating in PCBPSD. Emotional-focused strategies should be implemented to prevent the feelings of exasperation in caregivers and the gradual fading of patients’ previous self-image and dignity, particularly as someone’s parent. PCBPSD has helped FCGs deliberately focus on the strengths of PWD by identifying the capabilities they still possess, complying with their preferences in safe situations, encouraging engagement in activities they enjoy, and affording them greater personal freedom.