British nursing index bni - exported on 8/7/2016

There are 5.7 million carers across the UK, providing care and support to family members, relatives or friends who are ill, disabled or elderly and frail (Office of Populations, Censuses and Surveys, 1995). It is estimated that informal carers save the country £34 billion annually (Nuttall et al, 1993). If carers decided to stop providing informal care, health and social services would be overwhelmed by the increase in workload, many people would suffer and taxes would increase dramatically.

Being a caregiver with responsibility for someone with reduced health compared with not being a caregiver may mean different views of life satisfaction. Knowledge of what leads to reduced life satisfaction in caregivers may be helpful in interventions. Informal caregivers gainfully employed or not, aged 50–89 years, were studied with regard to life satisfaction depending on the extent of caregiving to identify types of social support of value for caregivers.

Reactions to caregiving and depression affect a carer's ability to continue in their caring role. This paper examines the relationship between reactions to caregiving and depression in carers of frail, older people and is a cross-sectional study of carers of community-living people (≥70 years), identified as frail, who completed a postal questionnaire. Reactions to caregiving were evaluated using the Caregiver Reaction Assessment. Anxiety and depression symptoms were measured using the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale.