Behavioural intervention to reduce disruptive behaviours in adult day care centres users: A randomizsed clinical trial (PROCENDIAS study)

Aim This study assesses the effect of an intervention to reduce the disruptive behaviours (DB) presented by care recipient users of adult day care centres (ADCC), thereby reducing caregiver overload. While ADCC offer beneficial respite for family caregivers, the DB that many care recipients show promote resistance to attending these centres, which can be a great burden on their family caregivers. Design Randomized controlled clinical trial. Methods The study was carried out with 130 family caregivers of people attending seven ADCC in the municipality of Salamanca (Spain), randomly distributed into intervention and control groups. The intervention was applied across eight sessions, one per week, in groups of 8–10 people where caregivers were trained in the Antecedent‐Behavior‐Consequence (ABC) model of functional behaviour analysis. The primary outcome was the reduction of DB measured with the Revised Memory and Behavior Problems Checklist (RMBPC). Results An average reduction in the RMBPC of 4.34 points was obtained in the intervention group after applying the intervention (p