Effective caregiving approaches for patients with Alzheimer's disease.

To address the need for nonpharmacologic approaches to managing difficult behaviors in patients with dementia, a repeated measures design was used to test the effectiveness of educational and behavioral intervention on behavioral and functional outcomes in home-dwelling patients with dementia and their caregivers' knowledge of dementia. Baseline and 6-month postintervention data were collected for 108 subjects (54 caregiver/patient pairs) following random assignment to an intervention or comparison group. Findings included increases in caregiver knowledge in two treatment groups and patient self-care ability in one treatment group and ratings of the most effective behavioral interventions by caregivers.