Summary PERSONALIZED PSYCHOSOCIAL INTERVENTIONS IN DEMENTIA CARE

215 This thesis focuses on the evaluation and implementation of personalized psychosocial interventions for people with dementia and their caregivers in the community. We searched existing literature to investigate which subgroups benefit from which interventions, evaluated several examples of personalized care interventions including the implementation issues of these interventions, and we composed an evidence-based implementation model based on the literature and our study results that can be used to promote, structure and guide the implementation of personalized psychosocial interventions in dementia care practice. Chapter 1 describes the background and rationale for the studies reported on in this thesis and describes the aims of our research. The continuing increase in the number of people with dementia puts severe pressure on the available care and support services for this target group. As the amount of professional care will not rise at the same rate as the number of people with dementia, more support than they already give will be necessary from informal caregivers. In order for them to cope with their caregiver role, informal caregivers need adequate support, as do people with dementia to help them deal with living with dementia. Psychosocial interventions can provide such support and they are aimed at improving quality of life by supporting people with dementia and informal caregivers in dealing with the consequences of dementia, reducing mental health problems, such as depression and anxiety, reducing behavioral problems and improving cognitive functioning in people with dementia or reducing the speed of decline. To increase positive outcomes of psychosocial interventions, they need to be tailored to the individual needs and characteristics of people with dementia and informal caregivers. It is also important to know if subgroups of people with dementia and informal caregivers benefit more from certain interventions. Although past studies have focused on the effects of personalized care interventions, they were mainly aimed at the institutional setting. Similar studies conducted in the community setting are difficult to find. Furthermore, in order for effective interventions to find their way into dementia care practice, successful implementation is necessary. This requires the use of effective implementation strategies that can be derived from process evaluations conducted when newly developed psychosocial care interventions are applied in practice. Chapters 2 and 3 describe the results of a systematic literature review on the relationship between characteristics of people with dementia and informal caregivers and the effectiveness of psychosocial interventions. We searched the electronic databases …