Category: Dementia – Supporting Carers

Alzheimer’s disease (AD), the commonest cause of dementia, represents a significant cost to UK society. This analysis describes resource utilisation, costs and clinical outcomes in non-institutionalised patients with AD in the UK. The GERAS prospective observational study assessed societal costs associated with AD for patients and caregivers All patients enrolled had an informal caregiver willing to participate in the study
It showed that AD is a costly disease, with costs increasing with disease severity, even when managed in the community: informal caregiver costs represented the main contributor to societal costs.

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The prevalence of dementia is increasing without a known cure, resulting in an increasing number of informal caregivers. Caring for a person with dementia results in increased stress and depressive symptoms. There are several behavioural interventions designed to alleviate stress and depressive symptoms in caregivers of persons with dementia with evidence of efficacy. Two of the best-known interventions are the New York University Caregiver Intervention (NYUCI) and the Resources for Enhancing Alzheimer’s Caregivers Health (REACH). The effectiveness of the NYUCI and REACH has never been compared.

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This study sought to better understand how programs at contemporary and traditional art galleries might play a role in the lives of people with dementia.

The emerging theory has four primary components: the art gallery is seen as being a physically valued place that provides intellectual stimulation and offers opportunities for social inclusion that can change how dementia is perceived. These components coalesced to create positive emotional and relational effects for those with dementia and caregivers.

This has potential implications for the use of gallery-based programs in dementia care within public health, healthcare, and museum/art gallery policy and practice

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Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the most common form of dementia and the prevalence will increase dramatically in the next decades. Although exercise has shown benefits for people with dementia due to AD as well as their caregivers, the impact of a dyadic exercise intervention including both groups as study participants remains to be determined. The authors review the current clinical evidence for dyadic exercise interventions, which are exercise regimens applied to both the person with dementia and the caregiver.

There is a need for well-designed randomized controlled clinical trials to confirm these benefits and to investigate several important points such as the effects of a dyadic exercise intervention on cognitive and noncognitive outcomes of AD, the optimal intensity of exercise training, and the cost effectiveness of such a program.

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The purpose of this study was to identify family caregivers’ experiences in managing the behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia (BPSD) with particular focus on their interpersonal interactions with patient with dementia.

Three main themes were identified through data analysis: triggers of BPSD, family caregiver’s actions in response to BPSD and patient’s reactions, and the effect of BPSD on family caregivers. Findings demonstrated that BPSD depended on the complex interplay of family caregivers and patients, including their interaction style. This information could help nurses when counseling and educating family caregivers to improve or modify their attitudes and approaches to behavioral symptoms of patients.

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Supporting informal caregivers of persons with dementia is considered to be an effective strategy for improving the well-being of caregivers and care recipients and for delaying nursing home placement. This systematic review aims to investigate the effectiveness of different types of respite care in supporting informal caregivers of persons with dementia.

Day care services are effective in decreasing caregiver burden and behavioral problems in persons with dementia, but they also accelerate time to nursing home admission. The results of temporary residential admission are rather mixed and show unexpected adverse effects on both caregivers and care recipients. High-quality comparable evidence on community-based respite care is still lacking, although earlier qualitative evidence indicated promising results.

Unlike in previous reviews, we were able to draw some conclusions about the effectiveness of some types of respite care. There is nonetheless still a need for new intervention studies measuring the impact of respite care, especially in-home respite care programs, on the caregiver, the care recipient, and health care resource utilization

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Family members are often the care providers of individuals with dementia, and it is assumed that the need for this will increase. There has been little research into the association between the burden of care and the caregiver’s sense of coherence or receipt of social support. This study examined the relationship between the social support subdimensions and sense of coherence and the burden of care among older people giving care to a partner with dementia.

The burden of care was associated with attachment and with sense of coherence. Community nurses and other health professionals should take necessary action to strengthen attachment and sense of coherence among the caregivers of people with dementia. Qualitative studies could provide deeper understanding of the variation informal caregivers experience when living together with their partner with dementia.

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Dementia has detrimental effects on cognitive, psychological and behavioural functioning, as well as significant impact on those who provide care. There is a need to find suitable psychosocial interventions to help manage the condition, enhance well-being, and to provide support for caregivers. This study explored the impact of Singing for the Brain™, an intervention based on group singing activities developed by The Alzheimer’s Society for people with dementia and their carers. This qualitative study used semi-structured interviews with people with dementia and their carers. Ten interviews involving 20 participants were analysed thematically. Social inclusiveness and improvements in relationships, memory and mood were found to be especially important to participants. As well as enjoying the sessions, participants found that attending Singing for the Brain™ helped in accepting and coping with dementia.

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In general, most people with dementia living in the community are served by family caregivers at home. A similar situation is found in Germany. One primary goal of dementia care networks is to provide information on support services available to these caregiving relatives of people with dementia via knowledge management. The evaluation of knowledge management tools and processes for dementia care networks is relevant to their performance in successfully achieving information goals.

The studied tools, processes and potential barriers related to knowledge evaluation contribute to the development and optimization of knowledge evaluation strategies for use in dementia care networks. Furthermore, the mixed-methods results indicate that highly formalized dementia care networks are especially successful in providing information to family members caring for people with dementia via knowledge management.

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Personality may predispose family caregivers to experience caregiving differently in similar situations and influence the outcomes of caregiving. A limited body of research has examined the role of some personality traits for health-related quality of life (HRQoL) among family caregivers of persons with dementia (PWD) in relation to burden and depression.

Personality traits can influence caregiving outcomes and be viewed as an individual resource of the caregiver. A family caregiver’s personality characteristics need to be assessed for tailoring support programs to get the optimal benefits from caregiver interventions.

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