ALDER (Anxiety Lowering and Deprescribing through Emotion Regulation) is a pilot trial of an online positive emotion intervention for adults age 65 and over who are candidates for benzodiazepine receptor agonist (BZRA) deprescribing. The ALDER intervention is 5 weeks long and involves weekly self-guided positive emotion skill lessons and daily skill practice exercises, both housed on the ALDER website.
Up to n=40 patients over the age of 65 will be recruited from Northwestern Medicine Primary Care clinics. To participate, patients must have (1) a BZRA prescription from Northwestern Medicine Primary Care within the past year, (2) at least 1 NM Primary Care visit in the past year, and (3) take a BZRA at least twice a week. Participants will complete survey assessments via REDCap before and after they go through the ALDER intervention. All study activities will take place online.
Feasibility, acceptability, and adoption of the ALDER program will be assessed using enrollment and retention rates, website user data, and measures of relevance and satisfaction in the post-intervention assessment. Patient reported outcomes such as anxiety, sleep and positive affect will be measured both pre- and post-intervention and rate of BZRA usage will be extracted from participant medical records.
