actigraphy

Family caregivers of older people who need care often experience sleep disorders, which can lead to various health problems. Although respite care is used in many countries, its effectiveness has not been fully demonstrated. We analyzed the sleep of family caregivers using actigraphy and heart rate spectral analysis to clarify changes in their sleep characteristics during short-stay respite care. Participants were all family caregivers living with an older person needing long-term care.

Background: Providing informal care for a relative or friend with medical or mental needs can extol a physical burden on the caregiver, including impaired aspects of sleep quality such as suboptimal sleep duration, lengthened sleep latency, frequent awakenings, daytime sleepiness, and poor self-rated sleep quality. Diminished sleep quality can worsen the health in the caregiver, including dysregulation of hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA) activity. Few studies have attempted to describe sleep in young adults who provide regular informal care.

Background and Objectives Although sleep is a critical health outcome providing insight into overall health, well-being, and role functioning, little is known about the sleep consequences of simultaneously occupying paid and unpaid caregiving roles.

Objectives: Gold-standard overnight polysomnography does not reliably capture highly variable sleep patterns across the 24-hour day that are common with dementia and often problematic for carers. We evaluated the reliability of automatically scored actigraphy data as an alternative. Methods: Actigraphy recordings were analysed from 15 community-dwelling people with dementia (135 days total) and 14 of their family carers (124 days total). Manual scoring used participant sleep diaries to identify sleep periods.