Designing Digital Mindfulness-based Interventions for Older Informal Carers

Stress is prevalent among older informal carers and has been shown to lead to negative
developments in physical and psychological health, as well as overall wellbeing. One area of
wellbeing that can be impacted is sleep, with high stress levels leading to poor sleep and poor
sleep causing stress. Mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) have grown in popularity in recent
years and have been shown to reduce stress and increase quality of life among older informal
carers. MBIs delivered digitally have the potential to be used by and be of benefit to a wide group
of people. Based on the apparent gaps in the literature concerning the area of mobile
device/computer-mediated MBIs for older informal carers, further research is needed in this area.
An opportunity also lies in the use of wearable activity trackers to monitor any potential
improvements in sleep, due to reduced stress. This paper focuses on the design of a digital
application delivering MBIs, to support older informal carers to manage stress and sleep. We
describe a qualitative study with older informal carers and the resulting digital application while
outlining how this system will be trialled with 15 older informal carers over a 12-week period with a
view to reducing stress and improving overall wellbeing.