[Carer burden in dementia: origins and intervention]

Abstract

Caring for a demented elderly indiviudal in the home is associated with a high burden on care-providing family members. Factors contributing to this burden include invariable context conditions such as gender, type of relationship and severity of symptoms as well as role change, coping style, available support and appraisal of the caring role. Most interventions for family carers have focused on providing dementia-related information and problem solving skills but have placed less emphasis on the emotional facets of the burden. Controlled studies evaluating the efficacy of support programs for family carers suggest that the greatest benefits can be achieved by interventions which are intensive, long-term, individually tailored and targeted to the everyday context. From these findings and experiences the outline of a psychologically based behavioral intervention for family carers of dementia patients is derived.