Efficacy of a Psychoeducational Program (Cuidando Juntos) to Support Psychological Health of Latino Caregivers

TL;DR

A culturally adapted online program called Cuidando Juntos improved the mental and general health of Latino caregivers of Alzheimer's patients.

Contribution

The paper introduces a culturally adapted psychoeducational program for Latino caregivers and demonstrates its acceptability and efficacy.

Findings

All five health outcomes showed significant improvement from pre- to post-program assessments.

General health and self-efficacy scores increased, while depression, stress, and burden scores decreased.

The program was viewed as acceptable and useful by participants, with effect sizes ranging from small to very large.

Abstract

Latinos have the highest prevalence of caring for a family member with Alzheimer’s disease and have significantly worse physical and psychological outcomes than other groups. Yet, there are few culturally appropriate evidence-based psychoeducational skill-building programs for Latinos. Our team culturally adapted the online Caregiver TLC skill-building program to support Latino caregivers (Montoro-Rodriguez et al., 2024; 2025). Our goal is to examine the acceptability and efficacy of this adapted program to improve social connectedness and overall health of Latino caregivers: Cuidando Juntos. Using pre-post data from the pilot clinical trial (N = 31), we examined user-reactions to the program to assess some aspects of acceptability, as well as changes on measures of general health, care-giving self-efficacy, depression, perceived stress, and burden to evaluate program efficacy. Data was collected from the community organizations in San Diego, CA and Charlotte, NC. Findings from the analyses indicated significant improvement in scores for all five outcomes from pre- to post-program assessments. Scores on general health and self-efficacy increased, whereas scores on depression, perceived stress, and burden decreased. Effect sizes ranged from small to very large. These results indicate that the pilot program is viewed as an acceptable and useful program by the sample of Latino caregivers attending the program and it has potential for a positive impact on caregivers’ self-reported general and mental health. This pilot findings suggest that Cuidando Juntos may yield mental health benefits to Latino caregivers of older adults with significant memory problems.