Health and quality of life

Little is known about the dyadic experience over time of people with dementia and their next of kin. The aim of this study was to investigate the state of mind of people with dementia, their next of kin’s experience of burden and satisfaction, and factors associated with these experiences over a 3-year period. The sample consisted of 32 people with dementia living at home with family caregivers in the south of Sweden.

Objectives: To explore the experiences of people involved in UK palliative care day services (PCDS) and identify the important outcomes of this service. Methods: Focus groups were carried out separately with patients, informal carers and volunteers from four purposively selected palliative care day units and with day unit managers from 11 units. Results: Patients benefited from both the support of PCDS professionals and social support of fellow PCDS patients, which contributed to a perceived improvement in their quality of life.

It would surprise many people to know that sight loss may be more common in people with dementia; the effect of these two conditions on people's lives had never previously been investigated until recently. Here, Vanessa Lawrence and Joanna Murray present the findings of their ground‐breaking research carried out with Professor Sube Banerjee and Dr Dominic Ffytche of King's College, London into how sight loss and dementia affects the lives of older people and their carers.

Objective: Alzheimer's disease (AD) burdens not only the person, but also the person's caregiver(s). This burden has been linked to negative health effects for caregivers. To that end, a survey of Canadian caregivers of persons with AD/other dementias was conducted to investigate the social, physical, psychological and financial impact of AD and/or dementia-related conditions on caregivers' quality of life.

AIM: This paper reports a study to investigate coping strategies and sense of coherence in relation to gender, the extent of care, caregiving activities and health-related quality of life in a population-based sample of caregivers aged 75 and over.

Aims and objectives.  This literature review aims to delineate the determinants of perceived burden by informal caregivers and provide insight into the interrelatedness between these determinants.

Background.  Despite the attention given to the various determinants of perceived burden, their interrelatedness has not been unravelled. Insight into this interrelatedness is mandatory for the development of successful, complex, multivariate interventions to reduce perceived burden of informal caregivers.

Design.  Systematic review.

We sought to examine the mental and physical health and health-related quality of life of current and past carers compared to non-carers, using two instruments—the Short Form-12 (SF-12) and the EuroQol 5-dimension (EQ-5D). A total of 249 participants (34 current carers, 14 previous carers, 197 non-carers, 4 non-respondents) completed a baseline self-report survey at randomization into the larger study.

The present study describes and compares quality of life (QoL) and factors which predict QoL among people aged 75 years and over who receive help with activities of daily living (ADLs) from formal and/or informal helpers. The subjects were living at home or in special accommodation in Sweden. A postal questionnaire was sent to a randomly selected and age-stratified sample of 8500 people. The response rate was 52.8% (n = 4337), and 1247 people [mean age (± SD) = 86.4 ± 5.9 years] received help and indicated who helped them with ADLs.