Senior Care Academy - A Helperly Podcast
Senior Care Academy is the podcast for caregivers, senior care providers, and families with aging loved ones. Hosted by experienced professionals, we explore essential topics like elder care planning, dementia support, financial advice, and emotional wellness for caregivers.
Each episode offers expert insights, practical tips, and resources to help you navigate senior care with confidence. Whether you're a healthcare provider, a family member supporting aging parents, or a senior adult seeking guidance, this podcast delivers actionable advice tailored to your needs.
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Senior Care Academy - A Helperly Podcast
Dementia Caregiving: Finding Joy Amid Challenges with Beth Fauth
When caregiving for someone with dementia, the most powerful support might not be what you expect. Dr. Beth Fauth, director of Utah State University's Alzheimer's Disease and Dementia Research Center, reveals transformative approaches to dementia care that benefit both caregivers and their loved ones.
What began as an unexpected passion during her college studies has evolved into groundbreaking research on caregiver support. Dr. Fauth shares how her multidisciplinary approach—drawing from psychology, healthcare, family studies, and even architecture—creates a more comprehensive understanding of dementia caregiving challenges. "Understanding the mechanism of how something works is valuable," she explains, "but what I really want to do is find ways to help this population."
The conversation dives deep into practical interventions that meet caregivers where they are. Traditional support often requires caregivers to attend in-person sessions—adding another burden to their already overwhelming responsibilities. Dr. Fauth's innovative online, self-guided therapeutic programs allow caregivers to access evidence-based support at any hour, without leaving home. These digital interventions apply Acceptance and Commitment Therapy principles, teaching caregivers to acknowledge difficult emotions while acting in alignment with their personal values.
Perhaps most moving is Dr. Fauth's perspective on finding joy amid dementia's challenges. Rather than constantly correcting a loved one with dementia, she suggests embracing their reality—much like improvisational theater. This simple shift creates genuine moments of connection and reduces unnecessary conflict. "We can't bring them back to where we are in the present moment," she notes. "Our only option is to jump in, join their reality, and go with it."
From emerging medical treatments to growing collaboration between researchers and service providers, Dr. Fauth offers hope for the future of dementia care. Whether you're caring for someone with dementia or working in healthcare, this conversation provides essential insights for navigating the dementia journey with compassion, resilience, and even moments of unexpected joy.
• Started in dementia care through work in assisted living and discovered her passion during an adult development class in college
• Transitioned from studying caregiver stress mechanisms to developing practical interventions that reach people who need support
• Founded Utah's Alzheimer's Disease and Dementia Research Center in 2022 to bridge research and community service
• Developed online self-guided Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) interventions for caregivers
• Found that the care environment significantly impacts the progression of dementia
• Emphasizes the importance of acknowledging difficult emotions while still acting in alignment with personal values
• Advocates for "joining" the reality of the person with dementia rather than correcting them
• Excited about emerging trends in Alzheimer's treatments targeting amyloid, tau, and inflammation
• Highlights growing collaboration between researchers, service providers, and policymakers
Welcome back to Senior Care Academy, a help me podcast. I'm your host, caleb, and today we have an incredible expert joining us. Dr Beth Fouts, a professor and the director of the Alzheimer's Disease and Dementia Research Center at Utah State University, focuses on the well-being of family caregivers, the transition into late life, assistance and how social support impacts mental health. She has developed the psychoeducational and therapy-based interventions to help caregivers manage stress and improve their quality of life while caring for their loved one. In this episode, we'll explore her research, the realities of dementia care and the practical strategies for caregivers. Whether you're a family caregiver, a healthcare professional or someone that is passionate about aging well, this conversation is packed with valuable insights. Dr Fouth Beth I don't know which one to call you I'm excited to have you on the podcast. Thanks for-.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you can call me Beth. I'm happy to be a Beth.
Speaker 1:Okay, sweet, my little sister is Elizabeth, but we call her Lizard sometimes.
Speaker 2:I won't get into my nicknames.
Speaker 1:Okay, cool, we'll just call you Beth. Could you start by sharing what initially drew you into the field of human development and family studies and then, after that, what motivated you specifically to focus on dementia care and caregiving within kind of your research?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a good question. I didn't have a direct line. I kind of found this passion, this career, in unexpected ways I guess. So when I went to college I really thought I wanted to be a physician. I love healthcare, I like clinical practice. I'd shadowed some physicians. Overall I was sort of committed that that's the path I was going to go and I took a um, a lot of psychology classes and I kept finding myself completely in love with all my psych classes and just kind of drudging through the chemistry and organic chemistry and like just not finding the love quite so much.
Speaker 2:So, right when I was about ready to pull together some of my applications, I took a class called adult development and aging.
Speaker 2:So it was specifically developmental psychology focusing on late life, and I had a little bit of an epiphany, I think, in this class I went back to earlier in high school. I worked at assisted living and I absolutely loved the residents with dementia. Like I could come home and just tell stories and stories and stories about funny things that they said and and ways that we had to kind of improvise to get somebody to not try to leave the facility, try, ways that we tried to make things fun and I just like I 'd never really thought about it as a career. And so that class in college just all of a sudden opened this door Like I could do health, but I could do this within a psychology lens or a developmental psychology lens, and I could do it focusing on dementia. So I kind of rapidly scrapped all my med school applications and started looking for grad programs in this area, and from there I'm just kind of never looked back. It's a great fit for me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so in that class, what were some of the things that you studied that really piqued your interest about later life development and things like that?
Speaker 2:Very specific to dementia, so I liked the class in general. In fact, I teach this class at Utah.
Speaker 1:State.
Speaker 2:University. But the dementia components just kept reminding me of how much I love the population and, to be honest with you, they showed a video in that class that I would never show my students now because it was brutal on how difficult caregiving can be. I mean, I was crying in class Like it was, it just struck a chord with me and I, you know, I thought, man, like people with dementia deserve, you know, better care because in some cases there was neglect and the caregivers were.
Speaker 1:Did you have a history of caring for somebody, or it just struck a chord because you're just so passionate?
Speaker 2:No, not directly my grandmother that assisted living facility that we worked, that I worked at um. My grandmother had Parkinson's and did have some Parkinson's related dementia and we had moved her from Washington DC to that facility. So you know I did, I did see some decline in her but because that she was getting most of her care from um you know the direct care providers and I was her know waitress and I'd come in and visit with her. So I didn't have the family caregiving direct at home experience. I did see my mom struggling. She had, you know me, her youngest was still in high school, her mom she was visiting regularly in the assisted living. So you know I did see a glimpse of it, but it was really more. When I saw this video video too I was like that can't be accurate, that it's that bad.
Speaker 2:And it turns out, it's really, I mean, that was a very unusual focus, for I mean really only focused on worst case scenarios. So I've kind of since learned, you know, a lot of caregivers really do go through challenges, significant challenges. That's my passion. But a lot of them have a great experience too. I mean, they love, they love caring for their loved ones. So, yeah, it's not all bad, but it was the scare tactic of that video that really got me to say I'm. This is what I'm going to do.
Speaker 1:I'm going to go with this population in the class of like I don't know that I want to touch this and you're like that's messed up. I should fix it if I can.
Speaker 2:Yeah exactly.
Speaker 1:That's cool of you. So how would you say your background, because you said you got really into kind of the psychology and human development. How has that influenced your approach to dementia care and studying it? Compared to, I think, a lot of people in the dementia care space and research, they come more from the medical side, whether it's a nurse or a physician, versus a psychology side. What would you say is different for you and your approach?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so human development and family studies is sort of a brand of developmental psychology, so you can kind of use some of them interchangeably, although the family sciences piece is embedded more within my department. The interesting thing about this field is that it's, by definition, multidisciplinary. So you're getting you're getting a lot of psychology theory, but you're also getting sociology, nursing, there's lots of, you know, geriatric medicine. So it's perfect for me because it's a combination of all the fields and that's really how I think about problems. I don't want to come at a situation or studying something from a totally like cognitive psychology, lens or experimental psychology, which has these sort of rules about how you study something, and they're valid, they're helpful.
Speaker 2:But I always think of things broader, as like well, you know why, let's say, for caregiving for somebody with dementia at home, maybe it is the medical piece that's really the challenge, but maybe it's the family conflict that you have with your siblings because they're not helping, or maybe it's the behavioral symptoms of the person that you're caring for. So you know, the sort of complexity of how to look at caregiving is just sort of naturally requires an interdisciplinary perspective, and I think that's where my training comes in. It was like if you're not finding what you're looking for in a developmental psychology journal, you go to a nursing journal and you look at. You know you can find things really in unique fields that are really relevant to caregiving. So I mean, sometimes some of the work I'm looking at is, like you know, economics-based or like how to design an age-friendly community to support people living at home.
Speaker 2:So sometimes it's architecture Like it's a combination of like how to help people live well with this condition, looking at it from all perspectives.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I like that. I think it's the way to get some of the best solutions is to say like they are in this one phase of life. But there's all of these other things that support to the architecture of the house that they live in, to the family relationships, to what it does for the rest of their body physically, which brings in medical, and so that's a good approach, I think. Are there any, or could you discuss any, milestones or turning points that have happened since that scare tactic class? That has kind of been a turning point in your career and shaped your current research approach from I want to get into dementia and study it to what you're specifically researching now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've had some really awesome things happen. I mean, I was trained by a fantastic dementia caregiver researcher, probably one of the best in the world, steve Zaret. He's still a mentor for me, so he's helped. I mean, I think that was my. The luckiest thing in the world was starting by working with him.
Speaker 2:But some of the things that I definitely have seen a transition for my own work is that really early on I was using a very sort of data-driven approach. We would go collect data you know or use secondary existing data sets and I kept sort of trying to study, like how things work. And I did that for a long time and I felt like that was really valuable. But I started interfacing. Actually, when I moved to Utah, I started interfacing with like service providers and people that work with the Alzheimer's Association and people at the Department of Health and I started realizing like the research that I'm doing is really it's okay, but it's not getting to the people that need it. It's like understanding the mechanism of how something works is valuable because it's not getting to the people that need it. It's like understanding the mechanism of how something works is valuable because it helps you build a better intervention to make things better, but I started transitioning more into like what I really want to do is find ways to help this population. I want to talk to these individuals. I want to hear what are they worried about? What do they want me to study, essentially? So I really switched. I would say, yeah, after moving to Utah.
Speaker 2:The first five years I was here, I really started choosing different projects to work on, focusing much more on interventions and how to help people who are already in the situation. And then a major, major milestone, which was 2022, I worked with Dan Johnson, who's a representative in the district here covering Cache Valley, the Utah House of Representatives, and I worked with the Alzheimer's Association Utah Chapter, the Department of Health, and we worked with the state legislature to secure funding for Utah's Alzheimer's disease and dementia research center. So, totally unexpected twist in my career, I was not thinking I was going to direct a research center, although I absolutely love doing that. But this is where I think, all of a sudden, these 20 years of work that I've been doing on, you know, understanding how to help a caregiver, understanding what their stress looks like, building an intervention that can help them and then now I'm in a situation where I get to work with partners across the state, try to get you know presentations, education, these supportive services out to the public.
Speaker 2:Like that was really the catalyst, like having the center, and now that's a huge part of my role is not just to do the behind the scenes research but to say we have this research, so everybody, I want you to hear about it and that's been a major change and also just absolutely incredible part of my day. You know, my day, my week, my month was I get to let people know. You know you're not alone. Here's some great resources. We have amazing partners in the state. We're trying to reach people who don't know we exist. You know, we're trying to help people in rural areas where they don't have a lot of existing formal support networks, and so that's been a really like all of a sudden I get to braid all these different parts of my expertise together and now I'm feeling like, okay, now it's actually it's helping people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's super cool and interesting. Like you said, data, research on processes and machines and all these things. The data is great Cause it'll tell you hey, you just have to tweak this bolt a little bit right here and the machine will run better. But all of the research that you're doing, that, therefore, what is like I have to change behavior of tons of people and it's so much more difficult to do that. And it's cool to be able to actually be in a seat now where you're like I have all this data, I've done all the research and now let's impact people with it, rather than just like let's put it on a shelf but it's like, oh, look at that cute data that I found.
Speaker 2:Right, Like getting a publication isn't as exciting to me anymore as doing a presentation to the community. Where I get to that, you know the information from that publication actually gets into the ears of people who are living with this on a daily basis.
Speaker 1:And they can one feel, I think, heard and validated. Then, two, you're giving some tools to their tool belt of like. Data says this if you do this, it'll help. Your research examines kind of the stress and well-being of the family caregivers and for the individuals with dementia. What are some of the things that you found in this specific area of like for the family caregivers as they're helping the people with dementia? I'm curious on the impact that that has with for the individual living with dementia. So like I imagine a family caregiver that is like a 10 out of 10 stress, 10 out of 10, like burnt out, all those things probably does have a negative impact, uh, effect or an adverse effect on the individual with dementia, compared to somebody that has all these resources and is stressful. You know it's still a three, four or five, but I imagine that has a better outcome and did you find anything like that as people? So I think caregivers always put themselves in the back seat and then, but it probably has actually worse effects on their loved one.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So we, you know, very early on, kind of back when I was still studying more of this basic research not intervention research there was a lot of interesting stuff that was coming out of a large data set based in Cache County called the Cache County Study of Memory and Aging, and we were finding a lot of different analyses that were showing that the care environment impacts the progression of dementia. So like there's a lot of different analyses that were showing that the care environment impacts the progression of dementia. So like there there's a lot of different ways to unpack that Um. But you know, providing like a cognitively stimulating environment seemed to have a protective role.
Speaker 2:Early on in dementia People declined a little bit slower Um, having a lot of emotional support from the, the caregiver, feeling like this relationship was a close one, was helpful for the person with dementia. So really early on again, before we got into intervention work, we knew that the care environment mattered for both the caregiver and for the person with dementia. Some of the things that I've you know, that I've learned as we've worked on different interventions, tested them to see if they work. I think the first and most important thing is that most caregivers do not know that there are interventions available. So there's this sort of realistic thing that we live with in caregiver research, which is that caregivers, by definition, they're going through a lot and it's really hard to take on one more thing, so it's often they
Speaker 2:don't know that they're going through a lot and it's really hard to take on one more thing. So it's often they don't know that they're available or if they do know, they're like I just don't have time, which is understandable and I'm very empathetic to that. I think you know, I think designing an intervention that requires them to drive and come in for an hour and find somebody to supervise their loved one you know I've done research on those and those interventions work. But I think that you know I've done research on those and those interventions work. But I think that you know, over time I started feeling again much more practical about how do we reach a population that they have a hard time driving and you know we can't necessarily get them to drive from a rural area to Logan or to Salt Lake or St George or something. So it's like we have to really start to pivot what we're doing to fit their life and not have them like sign up for our studies and we deliver them the way we think they should be delivered. So so the transition that I've taken with my own work and really passionate about is to try to build some of these interventions to be online and self-guided, so you don't need to pay for a therapist. You can do it at four o'clock in the afternoon or 4am If you're awake. You can do it whenever you want, and so those.
Speaker 2:The exciting piece for me is that those kinds of online interventions I mean we were still sort of in this early stage of like we know they work for other populations, will they work for dementia caregivers? And so far the two studies that we've done on this particular kind of intervention has shown that yeah, online self-guided, as long as caregivers sort of know it's there and they sign up. The other thing too is they would if they were to drop out of our studies. It was after they said, yeah, I'll sign up for this research study, and before they actually started the intervention, right, it was like again that overwhelming of like, yeah, I'll work out, I'll do that, and then you just don't do it. So we found that once people started the online modules, they stuck with it, and so that has been just really, again kind of helpful for them.
Speaker 2:But also, like from a researcher's perspective, just so exciting that if you can get in-person help, if you have access to a therapist, absolutely use human beings. Like you know, there's nothing better than having a conversation where you feel that you've been heard. But if you don't have access to that or that's difficult, then there's, it's not like then there's nothing available. There's there's these online supportive services that help the caregiver manage their stress better. So we're not making the stress go away. That's not the point. That's we can't make it go away. So we're just trying to help people live with that better.
Speaker 2:And through these, the way that we assess whether the interventions work is we do sort of these let's get it, measure your depressive symptoms, your anxiety symptoms and see if those improved. But we also interview and we ask questions about you know, how did you apply it? When did it help? And some of the responses were really great. It was like I found that, you know, when my mom was just repeating the same question over and over and over again, which is, you know, distressing for a lot of people. Even if you're a patient person, you know we see that they're reporting, that they're responding to that better. They're like living with that better.
Speaker 2:One person has said something interesting. I remember that she used to I think this was a she too she used to leave the room when her husband was being really disruptive, like she just couldn't handle it. And then, through these interventions and sort of learning how to live with difficult situations, learning that avoidance isn't always the healthiest for yourself, you know, she started thinking like he's in distress, like this is, I'm his caregiver and I, you know, by me walking out of the room, that's not actually like what I want to do. I think of myself as a helpful person, and so she just changed her approach to care. So I think that those are the kinds of things that you know we want caregivers to know is that, like, by managing their own stress, they're going to be better for themselves, but also they're going to be providing care in a way that's probably more like in alignment with how they want to be instead of stressed out and worried and you know all legitimate feelings for sure.
Speaker 2:We don't want to say don't be worried and don't be stressed. We just want people to understand that you can be worried and stressed and still provide really great, you know quality care.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that. I think, beth, that was a really great idea. To be like hey, let's make something virtual, to the point of going to the gym. Example, like I'm going to work out, and then it's like wait, actually I don't want to get up at six or 5.00 AM. Just like how there's online resources that like kind of getting a taste right, like versus I need to drive, carve out time, find somebody to come watch my spouse or my grandma or my mom, um, it's like I can do this at four and if it's valuable for spending a little bit of time online, very low. It's like oh, there's, I think, that an actual in-person intervention and bringing people. It's like meeting them where they're at. It's kind of a first level for them to start to experience everything. And I also liked how you talked about how do they want to show up? Because nobody.
Speaker 1:I feel this is a broad brush. I feel like caregivers don't want to be brash or impatient or whatever, like they want to be loving and their whole life right, if it's their mom or whatever, they've been a loving daughter and dah, dah, dah, dah dah. But it's difficult, it's being able to step back and say I'm a loving daughter. She's in distress, just like I was. As you said that I was thinking about.
Speaker 1:I have a three-year-old son. We just moved. He was lashing out and stuff. My wife, understandably so after a long day, was a little bit impatient. I'm like this is a lot for him. He's not lashing out because of whatever it's like there's change, his life is disrupted, all these things. So it's the same. It's just a different kind of dynamic because it's for an elderly loved one. One of the interventions that I'd love for you to talk a little bit more about you talked a little bit, I think, on it, but it's the acceptance and then the commitment therapy interventions that you've developed with dementia caregivers. I'd love for you to talk about that and kind of their effectiveness.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so this is yeah, this is my passion project right now. So if you picked the right one to discuss because if you picked a different one I'd be like, no, can we talk about the other one yeah, so ACT has been around for a while decades it's actually being used very consistently in in-person therapy, so I can't take credit for this approach. It's been around and really well studied. There's like over a thousand different studies that are like the most robust science randomized control trial studies where that shows that acceptance and commitment therapy works across many different populations. So we happen to be lucky enough to have two plus experts at USU that are this is their area is acceptance and commitment therapy. I've heard them. I heard them on how this mechanism works and instantly I thought this we got to do this with dementia caregivers.
Speaker 2:Like this is a perfect type of approach because, scientifically validated, it is based in cognitive behavioral therapy, so everyone's pretty comfortable with that as like an accepted form of therapy. Yeah, um, and then there's some components of ACT that are really important, but the best part was that these researchers have adapted it to an online format. So they had done all the hard work of figuring out whether this could be done in an online format, and then they were gracious enough to collaborate with me so that we could say, all right, now let's take these online formats, let's adapt them for dementia caregivers so that they relate to the topic. They see some of their stress embedded in these examples. We're prompting them with things that are kind of caregiver specific. So that all started really around 2017, where that marriage between dementia caregiving interventions and ACT online ACT kind of came together here at USU and there are other places in the world, actually, that have done the same thing. There's some other online ACT programs, but okay, so let's talk a little bit about why this was. Just I felt like so passionate about this being a great fit.
Speaker 2:So you know, a lot of the caregiver interventions that I had been familiar with were like okay, your loved one is asking questions repeatedly, they're wandering, they might be aggressive. So a lot of it was looking at the symptoms of the person with dementia and trying to help them, like trying to say, well, what's confusing for them, you know, kind of let's adapt the environment so it's less stressful for them. So a lot of it was kind of about let's try to reduce their symptoms, and sometimes that's effective. Of course, if you can make a better environment for somebody where they're not distressed, that's great. Start there. But there's just so much with dementia that you cannot control, you can't, you know, ask politely for them to stop asking the question over and over again. I mean, they're just, they have brain damage. So I think it felt to me like I didn't want the burden of change to be on the person with dementia.
Speaker 1:They don't have to do better to make the caregiver's life easier, right, it's just, it's sort of setting people up for it's challenging, Especially as dementia progresses right Like I might work early on, but over the years, months, years, it's a different challenge every few months, you know, and so it's a lot of moving parts and the piece about acceptance and commitment therapy is that it is considered what they call a trans-diagnostic approach, which is a fancy word for saying it works for a lot of problems.
Speaker 2:It helps with depressive symptoms, it helps with anxiety symptoms, helps with grief and, as I'm talking, you know add more. You know sort of mental health issues or concerns onto that list and that's where I felt like you know sort of mental health issues or concerns onto that list and that's where I felt like you know some caregivers are so anxious.
Speaker 1:I mean, that's their, you know, that's their reaction. Yeah, without this, without dimension in their life, they're anxious.
Speaker 2:And then others are going through intense grief and, as I mentioned, others are like the caregiving situation's fine, my work life has just gone out the window or my social relationships have been failing. So it just felt like caregivers have their own, like they have their own needs that are unique. It's not like one intervention fits all. Like if you give an intervention on, like well, let's build up your social support network Super important to do that but like maybe social support isn't what they're worried about, maybe they're worried about grief and loss. So ACT is just because it's really focused on whatever your issue is, let's work on. That is kind of how it works. So, again, if it's anxiety symptoms, if it's conflict, if it's, et cetera, grief, it's teaching people to say, like most of us, when we say let's say grief is a good example, you're, you're grieving the loss of this person who's right in front of you, but the relationship has changed.
Speaker 2:And a lot of times when those feelings of grief will pop up, we we really try to avoid them. We just say like I don't want to go there, I'm going to distract myself, or I'm going to just be happy, happy, happy, or I'm going to binge watch, you know, seven episodes of Netflix, like we do this thing where we're like I don't want to feel that way, so we avoid that. And ACT is about starting to become more comfortable with like letting those feelings show up and actually eventually getting to the part, to the place where you might even be, not just like okay with them being there, but like kind of curious, like I wonder why like why is today?
Speaker 1:why am?
Speaker 2:I feeling such grief today. So first step is just kind of giving yourself compassion and permission to feel the pretty strong emotions that we tend to do our best to like run away from and then and then the second piece, which is really important, is to sort of do things the way you want to do them anyway. So if you are somebody that, there's a really great exercise that we do in our intervention where we say, like, pick a characteristic that you think is really like you love when you do it, you love when you see it in other people. So you know things like people that are patient or compassionate or whatever, pick your flavor, joyful, and you pick one of those. You're just like, yeah, like joyful, like I, just like I like when I'm joyful, I like when other people are joyful, and you start to think about all your everyday activities that you're doing, including caregiving. How do you do them joyfully? So it's like I can be sad and I can have grief and anger, but I can also. I like, I like joyful.
Speaker 1:I can, I can try to be anyways, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So it's like kind of feel, feeling what you're feeling. But then you know again compassion, how can I, how can I be a compassionate caregiver, how can I be a patient caregiver? And it's not to say you have to do all these things perfectly like, oh yeah, all these wonderful characteristics, figure out how to do them. You pick one and you just try to integrate it into your daily activities as much as you can, and sometimes that's enough to like just get yourself to kind of check, like am I really going to yell at this person and be like you already asked that question? Or you're going to say wait a minute, compassionately. Compassion, like how am I going to say this differently? You just feel better about your response when you do it in a way that's aligned with your own values.
Speaker 2:And then there's also some important sort of mindfulness and meditation type pieces of again, when we're distressed, we're usually really reactive, right, so we're in the moment. These emotions are getting bigger and bigger and bigger, and just a lot of like focusing on the present and deep breathing and those kinds of things that deescalate your physiological reactivity to the situation so that you can like have enough like brain space to say, all right, now that I've breathed. How is it that I want to respond to this scenario? Because that's kind of where we tend to go off base, right? It's like we all behave exactly how we want to behave when there's no stress in our lives.
Speaker 1:Like oh yeah, we're compassionate.
Speaker 2:We're joyful, like yeah, when there's no stress, easy peasy, right. But then as soon as we're stressed, that's when we start to say I'm going off the rails, I'm getting impatient, I'm getting, you know, I'm behaving in ways that I don't like. So then we feel guilt when we behave in ways we don't like. So now we're adding guilt on top of the anger, like it's. So this is a little bit of a snowball of like. If we just pause and we say anger is allowed to be there, frustration is allowed to be there, let's not snowball this into anything bigger than it is. Take a deep breath and then let's try to behave in a way that's aligned with how we want to behave. So you know, it doesn't take a ton of steps to sort of set this up for caregivers.
Speaker 2:In our interventions we have some prompts and you know what's an emotion that you're, that you struggle with, and here's some things you might be doing. Pick one and they kind of link up together and they have some practice exercises. So I mean acceptance and commitment therapy is. There's so many resources free online. You can Google stuff, you can go on YouTube really awesome little clips on like oh yeah, I guess I do you know I do that and I could work on that. So so this is why I think you know again, this isn't it's. I didn't recreate something that wasn't already there. I think what we did was we took something that was working really well in other populations and we said let's help people who are in a very distressing situation that they can't get out of. Uh, let's help them live with it a little better.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that. I think, like you said, it's, it's taking something and applying it to a population that I think gets overlooked. Just as much as people with dementia get overlooked, those caring for them get it even more so maybe. And so helping them, giving them some tools, like a pause to reenergize, like just breathe and I like to the point of acknowledging the emotion and then showing up how you like to anyways, I think is more empowering than just not acknowledging the emotion and forcing yourself to show up joyfully the best you can, because that's shoving it down and then eventually you're going to blow up, versus just saying like I am so frustrated right now, with the 80th time that she's asked me that question, it seems like in the last two minutes, um, somehow, and it's just like that's really frustrating, but how can I re-on? So I think that that's I really love, um, act, acceptance and commitment therapy. I think it's a great tool that retrofitting it to this population was a great, a great step in the right direction.
Speaker 1:Um, you talked about joy. This is we're already at 31 minutes, which is insane to me. But speaking of joy, and maybe we'll end on this, you did a TEDx talk called Finding Joy in Alzheimer's Reality and you discussed finding the joy amidst the challenges that come with Alzheimer's. I would love for you to kind of elaborate on that perspective as you. How can people find joy through Alzheimer's?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So it's like you know a lot of times, especially in earlier stages of of any kind of dementia but sometimes it progresses even even longer. Where you know as somebody is, you know, asking questions repeatedly or they're mixing something up, that's, you know, important. Their caregivers are correcting them right, and you know in the very beginning maybe there's nothing wrong with that. The person, if the person with dementia, is like, oh thanks, sorry, I messed that person's name up or I can't remember what we did five minutes ago.
Speaker 2:Fine, you can go ahead and, you know, give them the information. But as things progress, we sometimes see this kind of incompatibility. That's happening where a person with dementia is, you know, talking about like, oh, this weekend we're going to get in the car, we're going to go to Idaho, right, and the caregiver is like, we're not going to Idaho, you can't even drive anymore, like, and so there's this battle. I think about like what's the reality? And it's really common, right, I mean, it's like, it's not, it's understandable that it happens, but there's a lot of like challenge in that approach. And so the joyful part comes where.
Speaker 2:I mean, I've heard there's some improv comedians that have done a lot on this, where treating dementia like improv, like they're going to throw you a line and it makes no sense whatsoever and you're just going to throw something back and and the thing about is it makes it light and it makes it fun. And so if you just start saying, like, where are we going to Idaho? Um, you know, and they start discussing something and you're like, well, what do you want to eat? Should we pack, you know, do you want to pack hamburgers or whatever it is. You just go with this. You know in reality you're not going to Idaho, but like it's still a really nice conversation that you've had with somebody, and so you have to be kind of fluid and sometimes it gets you feel silly. But you know, I think correcting people nobody likes to be corrected all the time and we have to understand that their reality is the reality. Like we can't change that. We can't bring them back to where we are in the present moment and get them to understand. You know exactly how it is that things truly are. So our only option is to jump in, join their whatever it is and go with it. And it is hard. You kind of have to like improv almost you have to train yourself a little bit to do that. You kind of have to like improv almost you have to train yourself a little bit to do that.
Speaker 2:But what I've you know what I found when I go into assisted living or memory care I don't know individuals, like I don't have a meaningful relationship with these individuals. I'm just walking in but right away you know saying hello, doing a little dance. You know telling somebody my. You know your hair is gorgeous, or I love that sweater on you and and they are like wow, like that was really, really nice. And so you can say that. You know, if they approach you five minutes later, you can tell them again like that's a beautiful sweater, I really like that. And then once again you see them kind of light up.
Speaker 2:And so there is this like thing that we can do to train ourselves that like it's we can bring the joy to like if we let them know. You know, this is a good day, I'm a good person, I'm in a good mood. Whatever you say, we can banter back and forth in a way that's not combative. We end up finding more kind of joyful moments in the exchange. We're not going to get them to our reality, but we can still have fun with it. And I think too, you know to be cautionary, to not like the whole laughing at them, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah. People with dementia can feel that too, that they're, that, they're that end of the joke. They're not in it, right? Yeah, it's not. Yeah, it's laughing with them and just kind of going with it.
Speaker 2:That's actually what I loved about that job in the assisted living way back when I was 16 years old was like I don't, I have no trading, I have no idea what I'm doing, but this person thinks they're at a hotel and let's just go with it.
Speaker 2:Let's go get some towels and, you know, take them to this beautiful room that, uh, anyway, so it was sort of a something I learned on the fly, but, um, yeah, something I think that we can all, we can all do better at at bringing those sort of moments of joy to people with dementia.
Speaker 1:Yeah, one of my favorite stories oh, I can't remember it was. One of our guests came on, talked about going into a memory care and there were these four sweet ladies sitting around a table, laughing, having the time of their life. And she walked over and like eavesdropped for a minute. They were all having 0% related conversations. They were just like talking differently but they were just having the time of their life, even though none of it connected. Somebody was like talking about their trip to Hawaii whenever that happened, and somebody else was talking about her dog that day and everybody was just like laughing. So I think that going in and enjoying the time, you know, creating a joyful moment for for them, even though the the grand scheme, maybe it's not joyful, but you can make joyful moments all throughout it, so I love that. Um last two, last two questions what trends or emerging trends in dementia care do you dementia care research, uh, do you see and are most excited about?
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, first and foremost, we are, we as in collectively. Research as a whole is making headway in some treatments for Alzheimer's.
Speaker 1:Still slow. The last person we had on talked about there was something out there that helps get the. Oh, what is it in your brain?
Speaker 2:The beta amyloid.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I was like wow, that's insane.
Speaker 1:That's awesome.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I mean, I think that those kinds of things are exciting and and, um, you know I'm on the board for the Alzheimer's association in Utah. We get updates on on research all the time and when you look at the numbers of studies that are going on right now some of them looking at amyloid, some looking at another protein called tau, some looking at inflammation we're really really thinking of this differently, as a disease that you know there's a lot of issues going on in the brain. We're not going to solve it with, you know, probably not going to solve it by, like, finding the one medication. So I think that that, to me, is a really exciting time because at least you know, for the first time in my career, when people say, do you think there's going to be a cure or a treatment, I say yes, I think there's going to be treatment that is going to slow the progression of this disease. We're already there a little bit and I think there's a lot of funding that's being pivoted towards Alzheimer's research right now, which is great. So that's the most exciting thing. That's not my world of caregiver research, but as a whole. I would love to talk myself to have a job right To say we don't, I don't have to study Alzheimer's anymore. Um, you know it's not going to happen overnight, but we're, but we're getting there, and so I think that hope is important. Um, and so, yeah, the other trends I would say too would be and these are also, I think, really valuable.
Speaker 2:We're seeing this is more of a connection between, like, policy and research. There used to be, I felt, a strong sort of barrier almost of again what's happening in the research world, what's happening in the services world, kind of like, well, they don't understand us and we don't understand them. And now I think there's a lot more like we all got to work together here. You know there's not as much funding. We all have to share our resources, and so I think that that trend is actually fantastic because it's helping researchers understand you know how can you fit your research into public policy, or you know policy like, if you're going to spend money on an intervention, why don't you do it on one that has, you know, some empirical validation that it's a good, that it's a good intervention? So I think there's a really promising trend where the work that's being done in these sort of different silos is now blending together much healthier relationships between research, like service providers, and policy.
Speaker 2:It's a. It's kind of a, it's an optimistic time for me. I mean, I go to these meetings and you can see nobody's fighting over territory. They're just like no, what do you got? Okay, I'll help you. Let's go get this out to my. You know, can you go do some lobbyist work? Like there's just a more healthy connection between everybody that wants to work on you know, in this area that's awesome.
Speaker 1:I think that those are awesome. Really exciting trend, really exciting things to come to pass over the next however long, whether it's 40 years or four years, like it's it's cool to see that there's it's getting more focus and maybe it's by the time I'm 80, it won't be something that's so scary, you know. Last question what advice would you offer to new researchers that are entering the field of dementia and caregiver studies?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think you know.
Speaker 2:Again I would say, make those connections very similar to my last answer of like my, the most exciting things in my career came from you know.
Speaker 2:Again I would say, make those connections very similar to my last answer of like my, the most exciting things in my career came from. You know I sat at meetings for 10 years with the Department of Health and you know there wasn't funding coming in for research, but I saw the utility in like the work that they were doing and so being a partner with them for a long time without, let's say, personal like gain, like I wasn't getting funding, I wasn't even necessarily getting a lot of participants for my research, but like that was one of the most valuable things I invested in was like if you want your work to have impact, you have to find the organizations that are able to, you know, put your work forward or like our work really not my work, but like all of us and so networking piece can be time consuming and as researchers, you know there's a lot of grind. There's like write the grants do the analysis, put the papers out.
Speaker 2:So of course, all that has to happen, that's our metric, that's how we, you know, we sort of get our work out there. But I think that there is importance in the personal connections of your community. So, connecting with service providers, go in and talk to the assisted living facilities, go in and talk to the you know Department of Health or the Alzheimer's Association and build relationships, because, again, it's like this teamwork approach is making things move forward so much faster than I could have done without those, you know, without those relationships, and so I think it's just been a really, it's been a win-win for our state, even like. We've gotten recognized as a state for working really well together with these organizations, even without funding to support that. So, yeah, I would say there's a lot of like. You're the researcher brain is absolutely necessary and you know you got to. You have to develop that. But there is this piece of like, the. So what? Like? Don't do it for the sake of a manuscript, do it for the sake of like, who might benefit from it directly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I like that. Have a long-term perspective rather than let's get a manuscript published and whatnot. It's like how do we make change over the next decade? Well, Dr Beth Fouth, it's been a lot of fun talking to you. I can't recommend enough for anybody working in dementia or with a caregiver of a client or a family member with dementia go listen to your TEDx talk about finding joy in an Alzheimer's reality and then just all the research that you're doing.
Speaker 2:I appreciate the work that you that you're doing and giving some time to myself and the listeners, so yeah, and then I'll just mention if anybody's curious about anything I talked about, they can come to our website too. It's adrcusuedu. We've got resources on a clinic that we offer for free telehealth and in person. We've got research studies that we're recruiting for. They can just connect with me. I can direct them to more specific things. So yeah, just anybody listening. If they want to reach out, I'm happy to receive an email or or just connecting on the website Awesome adrcusuedu.
Speaker 1:Yeah, awesome, okay, well, beth, thank you so much. I'm excited to publish this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thanks, gail. Appreciate all you're doing.