Development of Multi-component Counseling Program for Enhancing Resilienceamong Thai Caregivers of Older Person with Dementia

Abstract

The present research and development aimed at 1) developing and evaluating the developed program, and 2) developing and evaluating the Caregiver Resilience Scale (CRS). The process began with a review of the concept of resilience based on a synthesis of existing research together with an exploration of qualitative data derived from an interview of ten caregivers of older persons with dementia. After that, the residence theory of Davis (1999) was employed as the conceptual framework. In the end, the six domains of resilience were identified as follows: physical, relationship, emotional, moral, cognitive, and spiritual. These six domains were then used to develop the 30-item Caregiver Resilience Scale and the eight-week multi-component counseling program that was composed of the following eight activity sessions: engagement, promoting self-care, communication skill training, relaxation technique, managing physical care, managing skill training, religious support, and termination. The Caregiver Resilience Scale was examined by a panel of three experts to confirm its content validity, with the content validity index equal to 0.84. It was also tried out with 30 caregivers to test its internal consistency, and the result showed that the internal consistency was at a high level (a = 0.87). Furthermore, the Exploratory Factor Analysis was conducted with 150 caregivers to test construct validity of the scale, and it was found that all six domains of the Caregiver Resilience Scale had construct validity. As for the multi-component counseling program, it was tried out with 60 caregivers who were recruited by means of purposive sampling, with 30 of them in the intervention group and the other 30 in the control group. The Caregiver Resilience Scale was used to evaluate the program, and data were analyzed by means of repeated measures ANOVA. The results indicated that the resilience scores of the participants in the intervention group were higher than those of the control group at one month after the program and at the follow-ups.