Alvariza, Anette

Background: Family caregivers often report having unmet support needs when caring for someone with life-threatening illness. They are at risk for psychological distress, adverse physical symptoms and negatively affected quality of life. Objectives: This study aims to explore associations between family caregivers’ support needs and quality of life when caring for a spouse receiving specialized palliative home care.

Background: Family caregivers in palliative care may be placed in a complicated emotional situation wherein they suffer the risk of grief reactions both pre- and postbereavement and may also experience symptoms of anxiety and depression. Objective: The aim of this study was to investigate (1) associations between predeath grief and postdeath grief and (2) whether these are moderated by symptoms of anxiety and depression. Design: This was a prospective correlational study.

This article investigates longitudinal variations in grief, self-rated health, and symptoms of anxiety and depression among family caregivers in palliative care. Data were taken from a randomized psycho-educational intervention trial and were collected at four time-points; at baseline, upon completion, 2 months later, and 6 months after the patient's death. In total, 117 family caregivers completed all questionnaires. The participants' grief was stable across the measurements, while anxiety, depression, and health varied significantly (p < 0.05).

Introduction: In palliative care, family caregivers are often faced with experiences of grief in anticipation of the loss of a close person. An instrument designed to measure this form of grief is the Anticipatory Grief Scale, which includes 27 items and has been used in several studies in various contexts.

Background: Although there has been a steady increase in intervention studies aimed toward supporting family caregivers in palliative cancer care, they often report modest effect sizes and there is a lack of knowledge about possible barriers to intervention effectiveness. Objective: The aim of this study is to explore the characteristics of family caregivers who did not benefit from a successful psychoeducational group intervention compared with the characteristics of those who did.

The Texas Revised Inventory of Grief (TRIG) was developed to measure the intensity of grief after the death of a close person. It consists of two scales: TRIG I (past behaviors) and TRIG II (present feelings). Because of inconsistencies in previous validations, the instrument needs to be further validated, hence the aim of this study was to evaluate the psychometric properties of the TRIG in a sample of bereaved family caregivers in Sweden. The TRIG was translated to Swedish according to standard principles, and 129 bereaved family caregivers completed the questionnaire.

Context Previous studies have supported the psychometric properties of the 22-Item Zarit Burden Interview (ZBI-22) scale among family caregivers of people with various disorders, including Parkinson's disease (PD). However, its short forms have not been psychometrically tested among PD family caregivers, and available psychometric analyses have not accounted for the ordinal nature of item-level data.