Robot-assisted Psycho-education to Enhance Alzheimer’s Caregiver Health

Approximately 6.5 million older adults are living with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementia (ADRD) in the United States. In 2021, more than 11 million Americans provided care for people with ADRD as informal caregivers. Dementia caregiving is exhausting and time-intensive which can lead to increased risk for poor mental and physical health. To address caregiver burden, we developed a robot-assisted psycho-educational program using a humanoid social robot for dementia caregivers. The intervention had 3 aims: to help caregivers prepare themselves for their roles in their care-giving journey, to teach caregivers techniques to mitigate stress and challenges of caregiving, and to prevent poor mental and physical health outcomes. A usability study was conducted with 9 caregivers to evaluate user experience and satisfaction with our program. Participants reported a positive user experience with the program and believed it would be useful to other dementia caregivers. The results demonstrated the feasibility of our robot-assisted psycho-educational intervention to support and benefit caregivers. Several programmatic limitations were identified which, once addressed, will allow for a wider application of the program among dementia caregivers.