Long-term health conditions and their impact on people with sleep disturbances and dementia.

BACKGROUND

Sleep disturbances are common for people with dementia and can be distressing for them and their family. People with dementia live with an average of five other long-term conditions (LTCs). Little is known about the impact of LTCs on dementia and sleep. We aimed to explore this within the DREAMS START (Dementia Related Manual for Sleep; Strategies for relatives) trial of a multi-component intervention delivered to family carers, to consider how symptoms of LTCs impacted on carer ability to implement DREAMS START intervention strategies.

METHOD

We conducted a qualitative interview study recruited participants from the intervention arm of the DREAMS START trial in English NHS sites. Participants were 17 family carers of people with dementia, other LTCs and sleep disturbances. We used a semi-structured topic guide and conducted interviews, analysed using reflective thematic analysis.

RESULTS

We identified two overarching themes. Firstly, there was a complex interaction of LTCs, sleep and dementia. LTCs including pain, interacted with dementia symptoms to worsen sleep and physical symptoms. Carers reported dilemmas about whether to give analgesia, primarily understanding their relatives' sleep disturbances in terms of dementia diagnosis. Secondly carers were exhausted from lack of sleep and physical health difficulties made it harder to, for example, increase daytime activity for their relative.

CONCLUSIONS

There is a complex relationship between LTCs, dementia and sleep and the effect of LTCs in someone with dementia may be underestimated. It is important that families know that people with dementia need adequate analgesia. In addition, tiredness and illness in family carers may mean they need support to implement strategies, or they will be unable to break the cycle of exhaustion.