Berwig, Martin

Background: Caring for people with dementia at home requires considerable time, organization and commitment. Therefore, informal caregivers of people with dementia are often overburdened. This study examined the effects of the telephone-based Talking Time intervention, which is an approach used to strengthen the psychological health-related quality of life (HRQoL) and social support of informal caregivers of people with dementia living at home. Methods: This study was a Medical Research Council framework phase two randomized controlled trial.

Background: More than one million people in Germany live with dementia. Most of these people are cared for at home in the family setting. Supporting and caring for people with dementia is time-consuming, and family carers often have high stress levels and are at an increased risk of becoming physically and mentally ill. Medical rehabilitation (rehab) helps to relieve family carers and provide them with strategies to cope with stress.

Background: Individualized, outreach and structured multicomponent interventions are a promising intervention approach to relieve the burden of informal caregivers of people with dementia. In this study, we adapted and evaluated a multicomponent intervention (Resources for Enhancing Alzheimer's Caregiver Health II, REACH II), which was developed in the USA, to the German health-care system.

Background: Caring for people with dementia at home requires a significant amount of time, organization, and commitment. Therefore, informal caregivers, mainly relatives, of people with dementia often feel a high burden. Although on-site support groups are known to have positive effects on the subjective well-being (SWB) and perceived social support of informal caregivers, there are cases in which relatives have either no time or no opportunity to leave the person alone or in which there are no support groups nearby.