Therapy and treatment

Objectives: To evaluate the impact of a combination of caregiver support group and memory training/music therapy in dementia patients on behavioural and psychological symptoms (BPSD) and caregiver burden compared to a control group.

Aim: To document the behavioural and psychological symptoms in patients with a diagnosis of established Alzheimer's disease (AD) for at least 3 years.

The aim of this paper is to describe working with the carers (families) of adults with anorexia nervosa (AN), which is different from working with families of younger adolescents. The main difference is in the area of rights and responsibilities of both parties. Moreover, as AN in adults is often a chronic condition, the treatment goal may not focus on recovery, but instead on improvement in quality of life. Thus the spectrum of nature and degree of parental involvement in the treatment of adults with AN is much broader than in children and adolescents.

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

My wife, Pauline, died from Alzheimer’s disease at the age of 59. She was 51 when diagnosed after several years of problems. I cared for her at home. For the first 3 years, I maintained my employment, albeit on an increasingly part-time basis, but resigned from work and cared for her full-time for 5 years when her needs demanded round-the-clock attention. She remained in her own home to within 5 weeks of her death, when fracturing my leg put paid to my direct caring role.

Objectives: To determine and prioritise what information dementia caregivers wish to know at the time of diagnosis and later on in the illness, and in what form this information should be presented.

Method: 100 carers were recruited from community mental health teams (CMHT) and a memory clinic (MC). A semi-structured Carer Interview was administered covering possible symptoms and management.

Objective: We reviewed evidence on the cost-effectiveness of prevention, care and treatment strategies in relation to dementia.

Methods: We performed a systematic review of available literature on economic evaluations of dementia care, searching key databases and websites in medicine, social care and economics. Literature reviews were privileged, and other study designs were included only to fill gaps in the evidence base. Narrative analysis was used to synthesise the results.

Ian James, Ian Powell and Katharina Reichelt describe how they encourage carers to monitor their own thoughts as a way of understanding the strong emotions they experience. This knowledge can then help carers to find better strategies for coping with difficult caring situations

Undertaking a literature review revealed that when evaluating the effectiveness of the drug treatments for dementia few studies purposefully explore the views of users and carers. Their views are mainly derived from secondary analysis of conventional scientific evidence. Where the views of users and carers were explored it was discovered that they evaluate the effectiveness of the drug treatments in terms of quality of life.

Objective. Treatment decisions in life threatening situations (TD) are poorly studied in people with dementia.

Method. The carers of people with dementia were asked four TD questions, pertaining to cardiac resuscitation, intravenous fluids, oral antibiotics and intravenous antibiotics. The impact of key variables (age, dementia severity, psychiatric co-morbidity, physical illness, family relationship of carer) on TD were evaluated.

The economic and social burden of dementia on society is the value of all the resources used to prevent, diagnose, treat, and generally cope with the illness. This article assess the overall resource implications of dementia in Ireland. Six main areas are covered in the cost analysis as follows: mortality and life years lost, in-patient acute care, in-patient psychiatric care, residential long-stay care, family care, and primary and social care in the community.