English

The aim of this paper was to gain an in-depth understanding of the way the lives of individuals supporting someone diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Bipolar disorder is a severe, recurrent and chronic mental disorder that has a significant impact on the lives of those who experience it and the people supporting them. It is often the subsyndromal symptoms that cause major impairment in functioning and can have financial, social, interpersonal and health impacts for carers. A qualitative thematic analysis was chosen to enable an in-depth exploration of participants' experiences.

Respite care is a cornerstone service for the home management of people with dementia. It is used by carers to mitigate the stress related to the demands of caring by allowing time for them to rest and do things for themselves, thus maintaining the caring relationship at home and perhaps forestalling long-term placement in a residential aged care facility. Despite numerous anecdotal reports in support of respite care, its uptake by carers of people with dementia remains relatively low.

This paper reports on a study in two NHS mental health trusts in England in 2008-2009. Data were collected from staff, service users and carers to inform service and workforce developments. The findings were reported relate to service users and carers and concur with staff views. They relate to modernisation of services, the challenges of a multiplicity of stakeholders and organisations, as well as the need to involve users and carers in developments.

The aim of this section of a larger study was to identify the range of cues from which pain was inferred for a sample of residents with various levels of cognitive impairment in 15 UK nursing homes. Sixty-five nursing home staff and 36 informal carers of the 113 residents were interviewed. There was extensive use of body movements, facial expressions, and verbal and vocal cues and a considerable degree of interpretation of cues was used. There was little difference between the types of cue used by formal and informal carers, although informal carers tended to identify more of all types.

This unique bi-lingual book records the reminiscences of 13 carers from Sheffield's Yemeni community.The stories were collected by noted local writer Debjani Chetterjee and translated by Abdul Razak Saleh.

The present paper describes conflicts of interest in families which include someone with intellectual disabilities. Data were taken from a study concerned with the 1995 Carers Act. The research examined the experiences and views of 51 families who had some kind of assessment by a social services department. Cases were analysed where it was found that carers, the people for whom they cared and the assessors did not agree about such conflicts. Assessors sometimes stereotyped families and spoke of conflicts of interest when the situation was more complex.

The Scottish Executive commissioned this literature review. The overall aim was to provide a comprehensive summary of existing knowledge of how young carers are identified and how their needs are assessed and met. Therefore the review largely concentrated on the interaction between young carers and their families on the one hand and service agencies on the other. Understanding the needs of young carers was an important context for the review, but was not the primary focus.

Aging baby boomers, longer life spans, and rising levels of Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (ADRD) will result in a caregiver crisis in the near future. The ways in which caregivers deal with stresses related to caregiving will be critical to both their own well-being and their ability to care for others. The purpose of this article is to describe the Stress-Busting Program (SBP) for family caregivers and its effectiveness. The essential components of the SBP are education, stress management, problem solving, and support delivered in a group setting for 9 weeks.

There is a wealth of literature that addresses the needs of informal caregivers and the needs of health professionals caring for someone with a life-threatening illness. However, there is a paucity of research that deals with nurses who are caring for their own relative who has a life-threatening illness. This qualitative study explores the information needs, support systems available, and the impact that this experience has upon the nurse's quality of life.

This chapter opens with the movement to long-term care benefits in Germany in 1994 with a two-tiered system of employment-related, contribution-based long-term care insurance (LTCI) and a last resort of tax-funded social assistance. The goals were to reduce the financial burden on the states and municipalities, lessen poverty for care clients, increase long-term care services, expand home- and community-based services and support informal caring, and to prevent or delay institutionalisation.