# When dementia caregiving ends: The role of patient-caregiver social connection in caregivers' health and well-being

> **NIH NIH F31** · UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA BERKELEY · 2022 · $46,752

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT
 Dementia and other neurodegenerative diseases lead to profound cognitive, emotional, and functional
impairments. As these diseases progress, the person with dementia (PWD) becomes increasingly dependent
on a caregiver for functional, psychological, and economic assistance. It is well-documented that caring for a
PWD is associated with considerable declines in health and well-being. Evidence suggests that many
caregivers continue to experience these adverse effects for years after caregiving has ended (after the death
of the PWD), though this area has received less attention. There is also striking variability in the extent to
which caregivers experience these consequences – both during caregiving and after it has ended. Research
on the sources of these individual differences has largely focused on factors related to the external
environment, the PWD, or the caregiver that contribute to increased vulnerability in caregivers. Although
research has linked PWD-caregiver relationship quality with declines in caregiver well-being, little is known
about the specific interpersonal mechanisms that contribute to caregiver outcomes. For example, the positive
emotional qualities of the PWD-caregiver social connection may buffer against the negative effects of
caregiving stress, whereas lower quality social connection may drive increases in caregivers’ loneliness. In the
proposed research, I will measure PWD-caregiver social connection through observational measures derived
from basic affective science, including dyadic coding of emotional behavior in a laboratory-based interaction
between PWDs and caregivers (Study 1; N = 186) and text analysis of emotional language caregivers used
when describing a recent time they felt connected to the PWD (Study 2; N = 533). I will then determine the
impact of PWD-caregiver social connection on caregivers’ health and well-being (Aim 1), both concurrently (in
current caregivers) and longitudinally (in former caregivers, after caregiving has ended). Additionally, I will
compare the relative strength of these associations between current and former caregivers, and I will
investigate possible mechanisms (e.g., loneliness) through which PWD-caregiver social connection is linked to
caregivers’ health and well-being. I will then evaluate the predictive value of PWD-caregiver social connection
on caregivers’ health and well-being, above and beyond an optimal set of predictors identified through machine
learning (Aim 2). The proposed dissertation research will prepare me to conduct future studies investigating
the socioemotional mechanisms that may influence caregivers’ health trajectories. This F31 will provide the
necessary support to accomplish the following research goals: (1) to further expertise in basic affective science
methodologies (e.g., dyadic behavioral coding, text analysis); (2) to achieve advanced proficiency in statistical
techniques for longitudinal and machine learning analyses; and (3)...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10398011
- **Project number:** 5F31AG072891-02
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA BERKELEY
- **Principal Investigator:** Jenna L Wells
- **Activity code:** F31 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2022
- **Award amount:** $46,752
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2021-07-01 → 2023-06-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10398011

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10398011, When dementia caregiving ends: The role of patient-caregiver social connection in caregivers' health and well-being (5F31AG072891-02). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10398011. Licensed CC0.

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