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Chair Yoga for Stress in Dementia

NCT04162964 · Status: TERMINATED · Phase: NA · Type: INTERVENTIONAL · Enrollment: 30

Last updated 2025-04-16

No results posted yet for this study

Summary

Over 700,000 Canadians are affected by dementia costing the health care system approximately $10 billion/year. Due to COVID-19, the government has urged individuals over the age of 70 to stay home, putting this population at risk of social isolation. Older adults with mild cognitive impairments (MCIs), dementia, and their caregivers are at an even higher risk of becoming stressed, anxious, and agitated while in lockdown. Unsurprisingly, caregiver burden is extremely common, and often precedes institutionalization of the patient, as the demands of the illness begin to exceed that which the caregiver can sustainably provide. Since social distancing measures have shut down activities and support groups for these individuals, there is an urgent need for scalable, cost-effective, non-pharmacological interventions that can be delivered remotely to improve stress and loneliness. Yoga may be a viable therapeutic modality to address the psychological challenges associated with dementia in patients and caregivers, as it has been shown to decrease stress and improve anxiety and depressive symptoms in various populations. For this reason, we are conducting a randomized controlled trial (RCT) to assess the efficacy of an 8-week virtual chair yoga program to improve stress, psychological symptoms, and caregiver burden. This virtual chair yoga study will engage both older adults with dementia/MCI and caregivers (n=40-60 participants) during COVID-19, which is consistent with the need for decreasing costs and increasing accessibility of novel health interventions during and beyond the pandemic. We will evaluate the effect of this program on stress, loneliness, and mental health related outcomes such as fear of COVID-19, depression, anxiety, and caregiver burden compared to a waitlist control group. We will also be conducting a qualitative component in the form of semi-structured interviews. All quantitative outcomes will be assessed before the program starts and post-intervention and qualitative outcomes will be assessed post-intervention. Participants will be randomly assigned to the treatment group (virtual chair yoga 1 hour per week on Zoom) or the waitlist control group. The investigators hypothesize that after the 8-week yoga program, older adults and caregivers will report lower stress, loneliness, depression, anxiety, fear of COVID-19, and caregiver burden. Results will be available late-2021.

Conditions

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Virtual Chair Yoga

8-week virtual chair yoga program for one hour per week. Chair yoga is an effective way to offer modified yoga postures and relaxation techniques to individuals with limited mobility and/or advanced age for whom mat-based classes may not be accessible. The weekly yoga classes will be lead on the software Zoom by a certified instructor in English and French.

Sponsors & Collaborators

  • Lady Davis Institute

    lead OTHER

Study Design

Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Purpose
TREATMENT
Masking
NONE
Model
SINGLE_GROUP

Eligibility

Min Age
18 Years
Sex
ALL
Healthy Volunteers
No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start
2020-01-27
Primary Completion
2021-03-13
Completion
2021-03-13

Countries

  • Canada

Study Locations

More Related Trials

Entities

Diseases

Read the full study record

This page highlights key information. For complete eligibility criteria, study locations, investigator contacts, and the full protocol, visit the original record on ClinicalTrials.gov.

View NCT04162964 on ClinicalTrials.gov