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Findings of a two year study by the Young Carers Research Group (in partnership with Rethink, formerly National Schizophrenia Fellowship) which looks at the experiences and needs of children who care for parents with mental illness, their caring and filial relationships and the nature of professional interventions in these families.

Despite the fact that African American, Latino, and Asian Americans represent the fastest growing segments of the population in the United States over the age of 65, they remain understudied in intervention research. This article describes the process of developing and implementing a psycho-educational intervention for African American caregivers which was informed by a review of the care giving and intervention literature, and stress, appraisal, and coping theory. The intervention included 12 modules that lasted approximately 90 minutes each.

Background: Informal dementia caregiving has traditionally been perceived as an extremely stressful process; however, more recent research has started to focus on the positive aspects of providing care. Studies indicate that caregivers who derive something positive out of caregiving have better well-being. However, there has been little exploration of the factors linked to caregivers identifying positive aspects of providing care. The aim of the current study was to explore the predictors of finding meaning in caregiving.

The pathophysiological consequences of caregiving have not been fully elucidated. We evaluated how caregiving, stress, and caregiver strain were associated with shorter relative telomere length (RTL), a marker of cellular aging. Caregivers (n = 240) and some noncaregivers (n = 98) in the 2008–2010 Survey of the Health of Wisconsin, comprising a representative sample of Wisconsin adults aged 21–74 years, reported their sociodemographic, health, and psychological characteristics. RTL was assayed from blood or saliva samples.

In 2004 in Europe, more than two-thirds of those born during 1945–54 had a parent or parent-in-law alive, and the rates of co-residence with their ascendants ranged from less than four per cent in Sweden, Denmark and The Netherlands, to between 17 and 24 per cent in Italy, Spain and Greece. The proportions that had provided practical help to their parents during the previous 12 months had a north-south gradient, from approximately one-in-three in the northern countries to 15 per cent or less in the southern countries.

We conducted a systematic review of the effectiveness of networked ICT interventions in supporting carers of people with dementia. Five bibliographic databases were searched and a total of 1,456 abstracts were identified as potentially relevant. From these we identified 15 papers describing five interventions: ComputerLink, AlzOnline, Caring for Others and two studies from the REACH project (TLC and CTIS). The interventions reviewed were multifaceted with elements of networked peer support.