Et Al

Objective To identify common difficult decisions made by family carers on behalf of people with dementia, and facilitators of and barriers to such decisions, in order to produce information for family carers about overcoming barriers.

Design Qualitative study to delineate decision areas through focus groups and complexity of decision making in individual interviews.

Setting Community settings in London.

Objective To assess whether a manual based coping strategy compared with treatment as usual reduces depression and anxiety symptoms in carers of family members with dementia. Design Randomised, parallel group, superiority trial. Setting Three mental health community services and one neurological outpatient dementia service in London and Essex, UK. Participants 260 carers of family members with dementia.

Background and aim: While the number of people suffering from dementia in the Netherlands will double in the next 25 years, there are no plans to expand the capacity of residential care facilities for these patients. This will almost inevitably lead to an increase in the burden placed on informal carers. We investigated how caregivers living with a loved one who has dementia experience their caregiving situation.

The purpose of this study is to examine the effectiveness of the interventions for improving mental health of caregivers of people with stroke by synthesizing individual studies. A meta-analysis was performed to summarize findings of intervention studies of caregivers of elderly stroke patients. Additionally, a sensitivity analysis and a publication bias were tested.

BACKGROUND: Mental health services are required to take account of the needs of carers, yet little is known about how services affect carers.

AIMS: This paper explores the relationship between the user's mental health problems, the services received and the impact of caring on carers.

METHODS: Sixty-four carers were interviewed, measuring their experiences of care-giving, carer stress and the service user's level of impairment. A robust, composite measure of user severity was derived.

Aims and objectives.  This study aimed to describe the significant others’ experiences and needs when a person is critically ill or injured in an acute care setting.

Background.  Being a significant other to a hospitalised critically ill or injured patient is a heavily distressing life event. Addressing significant others’ needs adequately has been shown to be essential to mitigate the psychological consequences of such distressing events.

Design.  A systematic review of qualitative research. Methods.  Meta-ethnographic synthesis was used for analysis.