ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Health Serv.
Sec. Patient Centered Health Systems
Volume 5 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/frhs.2025.1598518
This article is part of the Research TopicBreaks that Benefit: International Evidence to Support Innovation in Research, Policy, and Practice Around Unpaid Carer Short BreaksView all 3 articles
Respite Time-Use Among Dementia Caregivers
Provisionally accepted
- The University of Utah, Salt Lake City, United States
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Caregiving for family members with Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (ADRD) places significant burden on family members, leaving them at risk for a variety of mental and physical issues. While engaging in sufficient respite is generally considered an important resiliency factor for caregivers, recent research has demonstrated that caregivers are not satisfied with their respite and are not gaining much benefit during the limited respite time available to them. Objectives: The current study examines whether goal-oriented respite planning, facilitated by a mobile intervention, can improve caregivers' subjective experience of their respite time-use. Method: Caregivers (N = 85) used a mobile intervention to help them plan and evaluate their weekly respite time-use. Ecological Momentary assessments (weekly) monitored number of respite hours, respite goal achievement, and subjective assessment of their respite experience. Results: Respite goal achievement on a given week predicted improvements in participants' ratings of their respite time-use outcomes one week later. Specifically, one week after reporting improved respite goal achievement, caregivers' ratings on happiness with their respite activities, feeling that their respite made them a better caregiver, and feeling like they had enough respite all increased. These effects were independent of the number of respite hours they reported per week. Discussion: Engaging in weekly goal-setting and goal-review activities is associated with caregivers' subjective evaluation of their respite time-use. Interventions that help caregivers implement goal setting and achievement into their daily lives would likely benefit subjective evaluations and experiences with respite.
Keywords: Caregiver stress, intervention, Technology, Family caregiving, time-use
Received: 23 Mar 2025; Accepted: 23 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Utz, Godfrey, Wong, Thompson, Coleman and Sparks. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Rebecca Utz, The University of Utah, Salt Lake City, United States
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.