Web App Helps Caregivers Manage Dementia Patients' Aggression, Agitation

Key TakeawaysAn app can help caregivers of people with dementiaThe app offers tips and strategies for managing behavioral symptomsCaregivers felt less stress, even though the patients’ symptoms didn’t significantly improve.TUESDAY, Aug. 25, 2026 (HealthDay News) — An experimental web app can help caregivers better manage loved ones who have dementia without resorting to drugs, a new study says.The app, called WeCareAdvisor, provides caregivers with strategies to help them manage behavioral symptoms like agitation or aggression in relatives with dementia, researchers reported recently in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.The app didn’t significantly reduce the frequency or severity of these symptoms, but the study found it did help caregivers feel less distressed and better able to manage problems.“Caregivers in this sample were managing, on average per month, about six challenging behavioral symptoms such as agitation, restlessness and wandering,” said lead researcher Laura Gitlin, dean emerita of nursing and health professions at Drexel University in Philadelphia.“Using the app reduced caregiver distress with these behaviors even though they still occurred,” Gitlin said in a news release.The app guides caregivers through a series of questions that ask them to first describe troubling behaviors and then investigate underlying causes of those behaviors. Based on their answers, the app will offer a series of non-drug strategies a caregiver might use.Caregivers also receive daily tips via texts and access to educational materials. They are able to rate the effectiveness of the strategies suggested by the app.To test the app, researchers recruited 262 family caregivers and assigned half to immediately start using the app. The other half were told they’d receive access to the app after three months.All participants were interviewed at the outset and then again at the one-month and three-month milestones, to see whether the app helped both caregivers and patients with dementia.By three months, those given immediate access to the app had significantly lower distress regarding their loved one’s behavior, results showed. They were less likely to become upset about problems, and more likely to have better well-being.“We found that caregivers used the app on average once a month,” Gitlin said. “Caregivers also loved receiving the tip of the day, access to vetted resource educational materials on the app in addition to the strategies personalized to their particular care context and behavioral challenges.”Prior research has shown that caregiver distress is in some ways more important than troubling behavior by a dementia patient, said senior researcher Dr. Helen Kales, a professor at the University of California, Davis.The level of a caregiver’s stress more strongly predicts whether a dementia patient will end up hospitalized or in an ER than the severity of the patient’s symptoms, she said in a news release.“How distressed the caregiver is feeling appears to drive the trajectory, and so anything that reduces distress in the caregiver may improve daily life for the caregiver and person with dementia,” Kales said.More informationWeCareAdvisor has more about the study and the experimental app.SOURCES: Drexel University, news release, Aug. 20, 2026; Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, Aug. 6, 2026 What This Means For YouApps might be able to help caregivers of patients with dementia manage their stress by offering helpful strategies for dealing with patients’ behavior..Sign up for our weekly HealthDay newsletter

Web App Helps Caregivers Manage Dementia Patients' Aggression, Agitation

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