Couples Counseling in Alzheimer's Disease: Additional Clinical Findings from a Novel Intervention Study

This article describes the clinical findings of a study designed to assess the benefit of counseling for couples, one of whom is in the early stage of Alzheimer's disease (AD). We previously reported our findings based on the first 12 couples that enrolled in the study. Based on the treatment of 30 additional couples, we have refined our treatment strategy to include concepts of Gestalt Therapy and Transactional Analysis and identified prevalent issues of concern to this cohort. The study design has remained as described in the earlier article (Epstein et al., 2006 Epstein, C., Auclair, U. and Mittelman, M. 2006. Couples counseling in Alzheimer's disease: First observations of a novel intervention study. Clinical Gerontologist, 30(2): 21–35. [Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar]), and has proven to be appropriate to meet the goals of this intervention as indicated by our clinical experience and feedback from the participating couples. Case vignettes demonstrate how to conduct the sessions so that the experience of each member of the dyad is validated, while acknowledging the differential impact of the disease on them.