Coping Skills, Parkinson's Disease
Conditions
Keywords
Parkinson's Disease, Caregivers, Expressive Writing, Complementary Medicine, Cortisol
Brief summary
This randomized, controlled trial (RCT) evaluates the benefits of expressive compared to neutral writing in individuals with Parkinson's Disease and their support persons. Participants will be randomly assigned to complete three, 20 minute sessions of expressive or neutral writing. Participants will complete evaluation of outcomes at baseline, immediate post, 4 month and 10 month follow ups to establish if benefits remain over time. Impact of these therapies on thinking abilities, physical health, and patient and support person ratings of thinking skills, mood and quality of life will be evaluated. Expressive writing is hypothesized to result in greater improvements and/or stability of function on neuropsychological tests of attention, working memory, learning, and memory skills compared to the neutral writing condition. Results from this study will determine whether brief writing exercises are easily used by and beneficial for individuals with Parkinson's Disease and their support persons. If positive benefit is observed, information from this study will be used to further optimize these therapies for larger trials designed to evaluate the value of the therapies for individuals with Parkinson's Disease and their support persons.
Detailed description
The expressive writing condition asks participants to write about the most stressful or traumatic experience of their entire lives over three, 20 minute private writing sessions. The neutral control writing conditions asks participants to write about how they spent their time the day before.
Interventions
BEHAVIORALWriting Intervention
Participants wrote for 20 minutes on three occasions about an emotional or traumatic topic (expressive writing intervention condition) or what they did the day before, while refraining from including emotional details.
Sponsors
Virginia Commonwealth University
Study design
Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Intervention model
PARALLEL
Primary purpose
TREATMENT
Masking
NONE
Eligibility
Sex/Gender
ALL
Age
18 Years to No maximum
Healthy volunteers
No
Inclusion criteria
Clinical diagnosis of Parkinson's Disease Caregiver of an individual with Parkinson's Disease
Exclusion criteria
Clinical diagnosis of Dementia Clinical diagnosis of other Parkinson's Disease-associated comorbid conditions (e.g., severe anxiety, depression, excessive daytime sleepiness, or psychosis) that significantly influence cognitive testing
Design outcomes
Primary
| Measure | Time frame |
|---|---|
| Parkinson's Disease Quality of Life (PDQ-39) | Baseline to immediate post |
Secondary
| Measure | Time frame |
|---|---|
| Parkinson's Disease Quality of Life Questionnaire (PDQ-39) | Immediate post to 4-month follow up |
Other
| Measure | Time frame | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Expressive Writing | three samples collected during the intervention period (which occurs between baseline and immediate post assessments) | The three writing samples from each participant in the Expressive Arm will be qualitatively examined for themes about traumatic events. |
Countries
United States
Outcome results
None listed