Activities of Daily Living*

Background: It is the wish of both people with cognitive impairment and their informal caregivers for the impaired person to live at home for as long as possible. This is also in line with economic arguments about health. The existing structure of day-care services for the elderly can be used to achieve this. Due to the current lack of empirical evidence in this field, most day-care centres do not offer a scientifically evaluated, structured intervention, but instead offer a mixture of individual activities whose efficacy has not yet been established.

Objectives: This study investigated the mediating role of coping strategies in the relationship between caregiver burden and depressive symptoms among family caregivers caring for disabled older adults with musculoskeletal (MSK) conditions.; Methods: The cross-sectional data were from a quota sampling of 494 pairs of disabled older adults and their primary family caregivers in Shanghai, China. The disabled older adults had MSK conditions and limitations in activities of daily living.

Older adults with dementia are more likely than those who do not have dementia to be hospitalized. Admission functional (ADL) performance is a salient factor predicting functional performance in older adults at discharge. The days preceding hospitalization are often associated with functional loss related to the acute illness. An understanding of functional changes during this transition will inform interventions to prevent functional decline.