Just as a fleet of ships moves across the ocean – the flagship in the lead as other vessels circle around it – people move through life with a social convoy around them, closest confidants shifting as a person\u2019s season of life changes.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a well-documented phenomenon for those who study relationships, says Amanda Cooper, assistant professor of communication at UConn: \u201cWe have people who are close to us in the convoy who provide important support, and then there are people a little bit further away in the convoy who are a more distant. But all of them move with us through life, and that group of supporters changes across the lifespan.\u201d<\/p>\n
Though what happens to that group of supporters when a person becomes a caregiver for a spouse with dementia? How does the social convoy change? Who might move into the inner circle, who might move out, and why?<\/p>\n
Cooper and graduate students from UConn\u2019s departments of Communication<\/a> and Human Development and Family Sciences<\/a> (HDFS) found that the hierarchy in the social convoy reshuffles as dementia progresses and the type of support offered by those in the convoy often makes a difference in where they land.<\/p>\n \u201cThis study sheds more light on the complexities of relationships between dementia caregivers, the people with dementia, and the people who are significant in their social circles,\u201d HDFS graduate student Chizobam Nweke says. \u201cOne may think it\u2019s a very direct relationship, but it\u2019s very complex and flexible and keeps changing as the symptoms of dementia change.\u201d<\/p>\n In \u201cExamining Support Received and Changes to Spousal Caregivers\u2019 Social Convoys Across the Dementia Disease Trajectory,\u201d<\/a> which was published recently in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships<\/a>, UConn researchers used previously collected data from retrospective interviews with people caring for a spouse with dementia who documented their relationships from the onset of symptoms through the disease\u2019s progression.<\/p>\n The study\u2019s co-authors also include Karen Shalev from the communication department and Lily G. Gorman and Ida Ghaemmaghamfarahani from HDFS.<\/p>\n \u201cOur relationships change naturally,\u201d Cooper says, \u201cand moments like a dementia caregiving experience can trigger more movement. What we found was that it really comes down to the interactions that we\u2019re having with other people that shift and move our relationships. Even just one or two unsupportive interactions can shift those relationships in tangible ways.\u201d<\/p>\n Take, for instance, one caregiver\u2019s anecdote about their spouse\u2019s family who didn\u2019t agree with the type of care being provided – and made that fact well known. In this case, the in-laws were explicitly kicked out of the social convoy.<\/p>\n Other caregivers in the study talked about how their friendships, even long-lasting ones, fizzled as the disease progressed, unrelated to a specific incident, conversation, or moment, Cooper adds. Invitations to do things simply stopped coming, and the ability to accept those that did declined.<\/p>\n \u201cNonetheless, there are some sources of support that just appeared, especially later in the disease trajectory,\u201d she says. \u201cMany people talked about support groups becoming an important source of support or having a medical provider or other member of the medical team become a lot more present as a source of support.\u201d<\/p>\n But simply being labeled a \u201csupport group\u201d doesn\u2019t guarantee a place in the social convoy, the study found, as such groups, especially those that are online, sometimes breed toxicity absent a strong moderator. Just as the in-laws brought unsupportive behaviors, so too can entities labeled as supportive.<\/p>\n When a caregiver does receive support, one of the most significant findings of the study says both direct and what the researchers termed \u201cindirect\u201d support are helpful.<\/p>\n \u201cAs the disease trajectory continues, the person with dementia becomes more dependent on the caregiver. We found that caregivers started noticing supportive behaviors a little differently,\u201d Cooper says. \u201cThey started picking up on things that were supportive or helpful done for the person who had dementia and experienced them as supportive for themselves.<\/p>\n For these caregivers, if you do something supportive for their spouse who has dementia, they feel it as supportive for them. That\u2019s something new for us. — Amanda Cooper, assistant professor of communication<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n \u201cOne of the women talked about how some of her husband\u2019s friends would pick him up to take him to lunch once a week and how it was so helpful to her,\u201d she continues. \u201cFor these caregivers, if you do something supportive for their spouse who has dementia, they feel it as supportive for them. That\u2019s something new for us.\u201d<\/p>\n Direct support, of course, was identified as things like offering a listening ear or bringing over a meal. Defining both kinds \u2013 direct and indirect – and knowing they\u2019re both helpful is significant, the researchers say.<\/p>\n \u201cOften support is provided to a patient and we\u2019re thinking about the patient only. But our study shows that caregivers are intimately tied to the experience of the patient as they\u2019re moving through this disease. That dyadic support \u2013 providing support for the spouse and patient together as part of their medical experience \u2013 could be a really good way to bolster the caregivers and, in turn, make sure there\u2019s better support for the person who has dementia,\u201d Cooper says.<\/p>\n For those laypeople in the social convoy, Cooper suggests this research shows there are even more ways of providing a caregiver with support, including something as simple as sitting with and watching TV for an afternoon with the person who has dementia.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think we always think of those behaviors as really meaningfully supportive to caregivers, but our study finds you can directly and indirectly support the caregiver,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n In many ways the same applies to a caregiver of someone with any terminal illness, though not wholly. Cooper says dementia care is niche because it oftentimes lasts many years longer than other terminal illnesses, and the cognitive changes that are its hallmark can be more difficult to manage than physical changes.<\/p>\n Nonetheless, she says, caregivers of any kind can still experience changes to their social convoy and still benefit from direct and indirect support, even if both are less pronounced than when it pertains to dementia.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m drawn to this line of study because these hard things are the most human things, and they often bring out some of the most beautiful human moments,\u201d Cooper says, noting some of the caregivers in the study talked about friends becoming like family because they commiserated over similar caregiving experiences.<\/p>\n And when a caregiver\u2019s load is lightened, Cooper says, \u201cIt speaks to the amazing ripple effect of doing good for other people. I could do something good for you, but that might also be good for three other people who are in your life. Being kind, supportive, and loving to a person who is navigating dementia is not just benefiting that one person. Based on this study, it ripples through to anybody else who really cares about that person. That\u2019s a beautiful piece of this study.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u2018Providing support for the spouse and patient together as part of their medical experience could be a really good way to bolster the caregivers and, in turn, make sure there\u2019s better support for the person who has dementia\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":160,"featured_media":254022,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2226,2460,2231,2235],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[2368],"class_list":["post-253985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-clas","category-faculty","category-health-well-being","category-today-homepage"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-10-19 09:32:27","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\/253985","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\/160"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=253985"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253985\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":254024,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253985\/revisions\/254024"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/254022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253985"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=253985"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=253985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}People Move In, People Move Out<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Even \u2018Indirect\u2019 Support is Beneficial<\/strong><\/h4>\n
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