Norwegian Trial Puts a Number on Dementia Caregiving Hours

A 280-dyad trial in Norway measured, in hours per month, what family caregivers actually do, and found that a six-month coordinator program did not significantly ease the load.

Family caregivers of people with dementia in a Norwegian clinical trial reported spending, on average, about 162 hours a month on personal care, household tasks and supervision combined at the start of the study, according to results from the LIVE@Home.Path trial published in Alzheimer's & Dementia on March 5, 2025. The figure, drawn from 280 caregiver and care-recipient pairs, is one of the more granular published breakdowns of what unpaid dementia care costs in time.

The trial, registered with ClinicalTrials.gov in March 2019, ran for 24 months across three Norwegian municipalities, Bergen, Baerum and Kristiansand, from May 2019 to December 2021. It used a stepped-wedge design, meaning every one of the 280 dyads eventually received the six-month LIVE intervention, standing for Learning, Innovation, Volunteer support and Empowerment, delivered by a municipal coordinator; only the timing varied, so each dyad served as its own control while waiting. At enrollment, caregivers reported an average of 30.7 hours a month helping with personal activities such as dressing and bathing, 37.0 hours a month on household tasks such as meals and finances, and 94.4 hours a month on supervision. On the Relative Stress Scale, the trial's measure of caregiver burden, the average score was 15.9 out of 60, and just under a quarter of caregivers scored at or above 23, the threshold the researchers used to flag clinically significant strain.

The coordinator-led program did not significantly change either of the trial's two primary outcomes. Caregiver burden scores were 0.7 points lower, on average, during intervention periods than during control periods, a difference the authors reported as not statistically significant. Reported time spent on personal care was actually 11.7 hours a month higher during intervention periods than during control periods, also not significant. Researchers at the University of Bergen, who led the trial, said the six-month program did not affect the primary endpoints of burden and care time, though caregivers did report improvement on a separate, secondary measure of overall change, particularly linked to contact with the coordinator.

For families weighing their own caregiving arrangements, the trial offers a published benchmark rather than a prescription: a documented account of what one large group of caregivers in a comparable home-care system reported spending their time on, not a forecast of what any single family should expect.