{"id":231078,"date":"2025-05-27T07:20:47","date_gmt":"2025-05-27T11:20:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=231078"},"modified":"2025-06-11T13:42:10","modified_gmt":"2025-06-11T17:42:10","slug":"investing-in-relationships-builds-resilience-for-dementia-caregivers-study-finds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2025\/05\/investing-in-relationships-builds-resilience-for-dementia-caregivers-study-finds\/","title":{"rendered":"Investing in Relationships Builds Resilience for Dementia Caregivers, Study Finds"},"content":{"rendered":"

When assistant professor of communication Amanda Cooper was in graduate school, her grandparents began to decline. She watched her large family, comprising of her father, his nine siblings, and 50 of her first cousins rally around her grandparents. Because their home was in the Idaho woods, near Yellowstone National Park, their distance from the hospital meant they needed round-the-clock care. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like a crazy storm hits your family,\u201d she says. \u201cEveryone is moving, and there’s all these pieces, and relationships are changing.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Cooper witnessed her family members disagreeing on how to handle tough conversations. After her grandmother\u2019s death, her grandfather would repeatedly ask where his wife was.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMy dad said he wouldn\u2019t lie to him,\u201d she says. \u201cHe\u2019d say, \u2018She’s dead. Stop asking.\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But other family members didn’t want to take this approach, causing tension within the family.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

That experience sparked a question that became the foundation of Cooper\u2019s research. How can caregivers <\/span>maintain a relationship with family members with dementia, while preserving their own sanity?<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

More than six million Americans are living with Alzheimer\u2019s disease, the most common form of dementia, and many more live with other types of cognitive decline. The emotional labor of caregiving and the communication breakdowns that happen between patients and their loved ones has only recently become a topic of research. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Cooper\u2019s new study reveals that people who invest in their relationships by regularly expressing love, talking about important topics, and spending time together, build what she calls <\/span>relational reserves. These reserves help caregivers cope more effectively if a loved one begins to change due to dementia.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe theory says, if I\u2019ve built a strong relationship, I\u2019ll have more resources to draw from when things get difficult,\u201d Cooper says. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This hypothesis, however, contrasts with another theory: that the more invested you are in a relationship, the more devastating it is to lose. Cooper set out to look at this apparent contrast through a social science lens.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In her study, caregivers reported on their past relationships with loved ones; how much they felt like teammates, how often they engaged in affectionate or supportive behavior, and how they approached problems together. Then Cooper looked at how those same caregivers communicated now with their loved ones who had dementia.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I just want to help people find a way to keep the love, even when the memory fades.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

She found that developing strong, loving relationships in the past led to more positive communication in the present, even in the face of memory loss or personality changes.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the hardest things with the relational side of dementia is that, when it starts, you don\u2019t know what\u2019s going on,\u201d says Cooper \u201cYou just think your family member is behaving weirdly, or you\u2019re confused. <\/span>Usually people get frustrated: they think, \u2018I just had this conversation with you. Why are you asking me this <\/span>again?\u2019\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But caregivers who had what Cooper calls a \u201ccommunal orientation,\u201d or a belief that the caregiver and the person with dementia are in it together, were better able to adapt.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIf I view this person as my teammate, it shifts how I interact with them, even when they can\u2019t give back in the same way anymore,\u201d she says.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The study also found that caregivers who could mentally separate their loved one from the disease, or who saw the dementia as the cause of difficult behaviors rather than blaming the person, were better able to maintain a sense of compassion.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI think sometimes we imagine that, once someone is diagnosed with dementia, their life is basically over,\u201d Cooper says. \u201cBut that\u2019s not true. People live with this for five, eight, even ten years. I\u2019ve talked to so many caregivers who have a pretty rich and full life with their loved one, even through the difficulty.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Cooper\u2019s goal is to help families make the most of those years. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m a big believer that we should live as much as we can until we die,\u201d she says.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>\u201cOften, scientific research just goes into a journal to other academics and dies there,\u201d she said. \u201cResearch is almost useless if it doesn’t actually get to the right people who can use it.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Her message to families navigating the rocky terrain of dementia is one of hope: it <\/span>is<\/span> possible to maintain connection, to adapt, to find meaning in caregiving.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s hard. It\u2019s messy. But it can also be beautiful,\u201d says Cooper. \u201cI just want to help people find a way to keep the love, even when the memory fades.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Researchers find that positive relationships between caregivers and their family members can improve the caregivers\u2019 experience after the onset of dementia in their loved one<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":231035,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2226,2648,2235],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[1860],"class_list":["post-231078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-clas","category-blue-research","category-today-homepage"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-29 19:09:20","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231078","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/37"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231078"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231078\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":231091,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231078\/revisions\/231091"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/231035"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231078"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=231078"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=231078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}