Caring for a person with dementia at home can improve outcomes for the person but often leads to stress and self-neglect for the caregiver. Yoga, which includes postures, breathing, relaxation, and meditation, may help reduce these negative effects. An integrative review of four studies—two randomized controlled trials, a non-randomized intervention, and a pilot cohort—found that yoga may reduce stress, depression, and anxiety while improving quality of life, vitality, self-compassion, mindful attention, sleep quality, and diastolic blood pressure. Caregiver burden, systolic blood pressure, and heart rate showed no significant change. The evidence was moderate, with small samples, indicating a need for larger trials.
Patients' spiritual experiences in mental healthcare carry positive, negative, or both positive and negative meanings, which caregivers often mistakenly dismiss as mere religious speculation. Through a hermeneutic interpretation of 32 stories from William James' The Varieties of Religious Experience, analyzed from a Caring Science perspective that views humans as a unity of body, psyche, and spirit, three themes emerged: spirituality's positive meanings, its negative meanings, and its simultaneously negative and positive meanings. The findings suggest that mental health caregivers must address patients' spiritual dimension to provide adequate care.