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“What Hath Night to Do with Sleep?”: The Caregiving Context and Dementia Caregivers’ Nighttime Awakenings
Published Web Location
https://doi.org/10.1080/07317115.2017.1352057Abstract
Objectives
Care provision for persons with dementia can be rewarding yet may disrupt caregiver's sleep health. Using the National Health & Aging Trends Study and the National Study of Caregiving, we examine care receiver and caregiver contextual factors, caregiver health and psychological wellbeing as predictors of caregivers' nighttime awakenings.Methods
The sample for this cross-sectional study included 451 caregivers for individuals with dementia surveyed by telephone.Results
Nighttime awakenings (1 item measure of waking and not being able to return to sleep) almost every night were reported by 16% of caregivers and 10% reported that helping the care receiver caused their sleep to be interrupted most nights. In a multinomial logistic regression, caregivers' greater nighttime awakenings were associated with caring for care recipients with higher fall risk, as well as caregiver characteristics of more chronic medical conditions and emotional difficulty of the care role.Conclusions
Emotional caregiving difficulties were associated with nighttime awakenings even accounting for caregivers' health and care receivers' disability. Thus, interventions improving caregiver distress may improve sleep health.Clinical implications
Clinicians should screen caregivers for nighttime awakenings so that evidence-based interventions and treatments can be implemented to prevent persistent sleep disturbances.Many UC-authored scholarly publications are freely available on this site because of the UC's open access policies. Let us know how this access is important for you.
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