Heart Coherence: A New Tool in the Management of Stress on Professionals and Family Caregivers of Patients with Dementia

We describe a stress management intervention intended  to  reduce  the  damage  and  stress  impact  on  the heart  physiology  and  function  of  a  group  of  caregivers (professional and non-professional) who work with patients with dementia. The intervention consisted in applying heartcoherence  techniques  in  a  population  of  72  caregivers  of patients  with  dementia  (42  professional  and  29  non-pro-fessional  caregivers)  who  had  high  scores  in  heart  stress and  burden  tests.  Six  months  after  the  training  they  were able  to  generate  appropriate  patterns  of  heart  coherence, with   a   statistically   significant   decrease   in   their   heart overload. We conclude that training in techniques of heartcoherence and positive psychology had effective results on the  stress  management  of  the  participant  caregivers.  This was  a  simple,  inexpensive  technique  with  lasting  results.To   our   knowledge   this   is   the   first   research   in   Spain studying  the  application  of  heart  coherence  techniques  to caregivers of people with dementia.

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