Psychological factors

Keshet, a course for family members of persons’ coping with mental illness, was developed to enhance positive family cognitive communication skills. Improving communication with the use of mediation techniques, primarily used by therapists, creates a learning environment viewed as a strategy of Knowledge Translation. To examine the effectiveness of Keshet in improving attitudes, problem solving, communication skills and attenuation of burden a quasi-experimental research design was applied with study and control condition.

This feasibility study aimed to identify and address the support needs of family carers (FCs) of people living with dementia and to assess whether the use of the Carer Support Needs Assessment Tool (CSNAT) intervention in home‐based care was acceptable and relevant to FCs. The CSNAT intervention comprised two FC support needs assessment visits, 7 weeks apart, plus associated actions addressing prioritised needs by the Client Care Advisors of a community care service in Western Australia in 2015.

Purpose: To evaluate the degree of psychological distress in family caregivers of people with dementia. Design and Methods: A nonprobabilistic sample of 54 dyads (people with dementia and family caregivers) was recruited. A sociodemographic questionnaire, the Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI), and the Barthel Index were used for data collection. Findings: About half of the caregivers had significant levels of psychological distress.

Purpose. To describe the level of caregiver strain and factors associated with caregiver self-efficacy and quality of life (QoL) in a community cohort with multiple sclerosis (MS).

The Oxford Friends and Family Empowerment (OFAFE) service is a carer support service that originated in a collaboration between the Oxfordshire Complex Needs Service and the national mental health charity Rethink. OFAFE provides support and education for adults supporting an individual with a personality disorder. This paper describes the background and operation of the OFAFE service, along with the early stages of the development of a similar service for young carers, the Young Friends and Family Empowerment (YFAFE) service.

This study aims to investigate whether selected social and psychological characteristics of family caregivers of persons with dementia are related to community-based service use in Belgium. Two aspects were distinguished in service utilisation: volume (number of contacts) and diversity (number of services). Within a selected region, dementia caregivers were traced via the detection of persons with dementia known to community health or social services. A probability diagnosis was made with the Geriatric Mental State and the computer algorithm AGECAT.

Background: This study is the first to explore how rumination or recurrent dwelling may contribute to psychological distress in palliative care.

Objective: When it comes to dementia, caregiving can have adverse effects on the psychological and physical health of the informal caregiver. As yet, little is known about the impact of caring for a young dementia patient. This review provides an overview of the literature concerning the impact of early onset dementia (EOD) on informal caregivers and on children of EOD patients. The available literature comparing the impact on EOD and late onset dementia (LOD) caregivers will also be provided.