Jour

Objectives: People caring for family members who have dementia often experience considerable levels of anxiety and depression. However, relatively little is known about the awareness of carer distress among people with dementia. This study investigated whether or not people with dementia are aware of the level of distress experienced by their carers.

Objectives: Anxiety and depression are major health problems for carers of frail older people. Positive reactions to caregiving have been shown to protect people against anxiety and depression. The aims of this study are to explore specific aspects of self-esteem, termed positive caregiving reactions, and examine its relationship with caregiving anxiety and depressive symptoms.

The article reports on the results of a study showing that cholinesterase inhibitors provide little benefits for informal carers of community dwelling people with Alzheimer's disease. Cholinesterase inhibitors increase synaptic levels of acetylcholine and produce modest improvements in symptoms in clinical trials.

Relatives may notice inadequacies in care when a relative with dementia is admitted to hospital. This study gathered views of carers to indicate how care can be improved.

Objective The high level of stress associated with caring for others with medical conditions has been recognized for some time. Reducing caregiver stress can improve caregiver quality of life as well as improve the care they provide to loved ones. This systematic review assesses the effectiveness of internet-based interventions to decrease caregiver stress.

This study focused on the experiences of informal caregivers of older adults and explored whether employment, use of home-care services, or other factors influence the health of caregivers and their ability to manage their caregiving and other responsibilities. Focus groups conducted with 26 caregivers and personal interviews with 4 caregivers identified 12 themes under 5 conceptual areas: caregiver health, relationships, independence, employment, and use of home-care services. The findings reveal that caregiving coupled with other responsibilities can have serious health effects.

The ‘sandwich generation’ has been conceptualised as those mid-life adults who simultaneously raise dependent children and care for frail elderly parents. Such a combination of dependants is in fact very unusual, and the more common situation is when adults in late mid-life or early old age have one or more surviving parents and adult but still partly dependent children.

Modernising Social Services requires the use of satisfaction surveys in monitoring some key aspects of quality of provision, including user/carer perceptions and experiences of services and involvement of users/carers in assessment and review. Using data from the study Evaluating Community Care for Elderly People (ECCEP), of physically and/or mentally frail community-based older people in England and Wales receiving community care services, this investigation examines three crucial aspects of user satisfaction.