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Background: Many men diagnosed with mental health problems are also fathers. This literature review addresses issues relating to both the fathering role taken on by men who have mental health problems as well as the impact of their mental health on their children. Material: An integrative review of the literature was conducted from studies originating in four countries, resulting in an analysis of 31 journal articles. Discussion and conclusions: Most of the quantitative literature focuses on the many risks and negative outcomes for children.

Aim.  This paper is a report of a study conducted to uncover the strategies that women caregivers of relatives with advanced dementia use to rest from care-giving.

Background.  Respite consists of activities and situations that briefly take caregivers away from their care-giving responsibilities. Qualitative studies are focusing on respite as an outcome and are deepening our knowledge about the experience of caregivers’ rest. The strategies that caregivers use to relieve the burden, however, are not fully known.

Background The General Household Survey 2000 shows that approximately 6.8 million adults in Britain provide care to sick or disabled relatives or friends, or the elderly. Carers report high levels of stress, anxiety and depression, as well as general health problems and physical injuries such as strained backs associated with lifting. The more demanding care, the less likely it is that carers will have time to attend to their own health care needs.

The profile of adult social care has probably never been higher and one of the biggest questions is how to manage demographic pressures on services as resources reduce, while aiming to improve outcomes and maintain quality. One group which brings these issues into sharp focus is the rising number of people with dementia and their carers. In this particular instance we have the additional focus given by the launch of the Prime Minister's dementia challenge.

Optimal palliative care cannot be realized unless nurses have a full understanding of what the patient’s family is experiencing. There is a gap in nursing knowledge related to informal care and ethnic minorities. The aim of this retrospective qualitative exploratory study was to investigate the experiences of Bangladeshi informal carers living in the UK, associated with caring for a dying relative. Semi-structured interviews using an interpreter were carried out and patient notes were examined. Four categories emerged from the data: caring, support, communication, and home and family.

Purpose: Although persons with Alzheimer's disease (AD) require increasingly more assistance with activities of daily living as their disease progresses, the caregiving environment has received little attention as a source of predictors of their survival time.

Unpaid carers provide the backbone for community care, supplying the everyday support and care to users which paid carers would otherwise have to provide. There is increasing political awareness about the need to support carers if the rhetoric of community care is to be a reality. Both research and policy documents emphasise the carer's need for information. Carers see the Primary Health Care Team as being pivotal in providing them with advice, support and information. This paper describes a study to identify carers in a general practice and to provide them with information.

The aim of this study was to explore the psychological processes and information needs in a group of 78 Hospital-in-the-Home (HITH) carers, randomly selected from two university teaching hospital HITH programs in Melbourne. Semi-structured interviews were conducted and explored with a computerised lexical thematic content analysis program. The results revealed that psychological themes of carers were mainly related to HITH clinical processes, procedures and the prediction of complications or deterioration of the patient.

The quality of life of the person confronting the end stages of their life may be severely compromised without the support of family caregivers. Indeed, most people requiring palliative care would not be able to fulfill their preferences, such as care at home, without significant family caregiver input. As a consequence, health services are mandated to support the family alongside the person diagnosed with a life-threatening illness. In short, palliative care is supposed to be family centred. However, the quality and type of support made available to family caregivers has been questioned.