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The evidence

What research has measured.

Forty years of findings about what dementia caregiving does to the person doing it. None of it was gathered by us, and none of it is about our product.

Grouped by what it measures: the body, the life, and the money. Each figure needs its source named before it is quoted anywhere else, and where we are still resolving that, it is marked.

Separate measurements drawn as one connected picture.

The boundary

What this evidence does and does not show.

This research describes dementia caregiving. It is not evidence that Proxi changes the disease or a clinical outcome.

It is the reason we think the problem is real and shaped the way we say it is. It is not a result we can claim, and we will not present it as one by putting it next to a sign-up button.

When there is direct evidence about Proxi, it will appear here, labelled as such, with its method attached.

An open ledger of citations.

What has been measured

In the body, in the days, and in the accounts.

This is the part that separates the framework from a description of stress. These are physiological findings from work spanning decades, alongside what the pattern does to a life and what it costs a country.

The depression findings matter most, because the gap between how many are affected and how many are treated is the part nobody designed on purpose. The money is here because it explains why the system has not solved it: the labour is free, so it does not appear in the accounts that decisions get made from.

Principal source line: Kiecolt-Glaser and colleagues, 1987 to 2003.

In the body

MortalityStrained caregivers, the majority of them caring for someone with dementia, have been reported to die at significantly higher rates than people of the same age who are not caregivers.
Stress hormonesAlzheimer’s and dementia caregivers have shown stress hormone levels of the kind researchers typically see in combat veterans. Not during a bad week. Sustained.
Immune responseDementia caregivers have been found to get sick more often, heal more slowly, and respond less well to vaccines, including caregivers who were young and healthy before caregiving began.

In the days

DepressionA substantial share of dementia caregivers screen positive for clinical depression, and a large majority of those receive no antidepressant treatment.
SleepChronic sleep disruption is reported by most dementia caregivers, and it is the first stage of the cascade rather than a side effect of it.
SupportA large share use no professional support services at all, which is a finding about the system rather than about them.

In the accounts

Unpaid hoursBillions of unpaid hours a week are provided by family caregivers in the United States.
ValueThe value of that unpaid labour has been estimated as a measurable share of US GDP.
CareersA majority of dementia caregivers report career impact: reduced hours, leave, or leaving work entirely.

What has been tried

Other people’s programmes, and other countries.

Kept deliberately separate from anything about us, and deliberately away from any conversion path on this page.

Support programmes, ranked by evidence

Several structured caregiver-support programmes have been evaluated and ranked by the strength of evidence behind them. Some have good trial support; others are widely used and thinly evidenced.

Not about usThese are other people’s programmes, evaluated by other people. Proxi does not appear in these rankings, and it should not: there is no comparable evidence for it yet.

How other countries support caregivers

Several health systems treat the family caregiver as a recipient of care rather than as an unpaid resource, with assessment, respite and payment attached. The comparison is useful mainly for showing that the current arrangement is a choice.

A finding we are careful with

One line of research reports that when someone calmly engages a person through repetitive episodes, medication use in that population changes substantially.

NoteWe report this as somebody else’s finding about human engagement, and we make no claim that Proxi produces it. Presenting it otherwise would be the exact family of claims this site does not make.

The framework

What these findings are proposed to add up to.

Sources, plainly cited

Everything above, with its citation.

Proxi is not emergency support and does not provide medical advice.