BACKGROUND The Sense of Competence Questionnaire (SCQ) was originally developed for informal caregivers of patients with diagnosed dementia. In order to study the validity and usefulness of the SCQ when applied to informal caregivers of older adults with dementia symptoms (i.e. cognitive impairment, pre-diagnostic dementia or dementia in its early stages), we investigated the construct validity...

Informal caregivers, most often older people, provide valuable care and support for people ill due to AIDS, especially in poor-resource settings with inadequate health care systems and limited access to antiretroviral therapy. The negative health consequences associated with care-giving may vary depending on various factors that act to mediate the extent of the effects on the caregiver. This pa...

PURPOSE Drawing from stress and coping models, we examined heterogeneity in the expression of familism (i.e., beliefs about the caregiving role) and its impact on psychological distress among African American women caregivers. DESIGN AND METHODS We relied on data from the Black Rural and Urban Caregivers Mental Health and Functioning study, a cross-sectional study of 521 midwestern African Am...

BACKGROUND The caregivers of patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) play a key role in their management. Half of them are spouses. This involvement may alter their own health, leading to exhaustion and depression. Since 2010, general practitioners (GPs) have been invited in France to offer an annual specific medical support to spouse caregivers. The aims of this study were to understand their e...

Background: Long-term support is essential for individuals with dementia in order to improve their and their caregivers’ quality of life. We need to investigate the unmet co-occupation needs of elderly persons with dementia and their family caregivers. This study aims to clarify the characteristics of co-occupations between family caregivers and elderly persons with dementia. Methods: We admini...

A cross-sectional, epidemiological study aimed to estimate the prevalence of burden among family caregivers of impaired elderly residents in the city of João Pessoa, and to identify associations between the mean burden and social and demographic characteristics of the elderly and the caregivers. A total number of 240 elderly residents in a previously drawn census tract participated in this rese...

BACKGROUND Caregivers of patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) need similar levels of support services as Alzheimer's disease (AD) caregivers, but it is unclear if this translates to increased caregiver burden. METHODS 135 participants and their caregivers (40 MCI, 55 AD and 40 normal controls, NC) completed questionnaires, and the patients were administered neuropsychological tests. ...

BACKGROUND It is commonplace for lay caregivers to overlook their own health concerns when supporting someone with advanced cancer. During this time, caregivers' needs as patients are often marginalised by health professionals, including General Practitioners (GPs), who may miss the breadth of caregivers' needs by focusing on the practicalities of caregiving. GPs traditionally rely on patients ...

BACKGROUND More than 153 million children worldwide have been orphaned by the loss of one or both parents, and millions more have been abandoned. We investigated relationships between the health of orphaned and abandoned children (OAC) and child, caregiver, and household characteristics among randomly selected OAC in five countries. METHODOLOGY Using a two-stage random sampling strategy in 6 ...

BACKGROUND This study assessed how family caregivers for patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) or dementia in Japan differed from non-caregivers in characteristics and health outcomes (i.e., comorbidities, health-related quality of life [HRQoL], productivity, and resource use). Caregivers were hypothesized to experience significantly poorer outcomes than non-caregivers. METHODS Data were com...