Randomized controlled trial, clinical 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.

Elderly with Alzheimer requires care to continue their lives and such care is given mostly by families. Care of elderly with Alzheimer is a stressful process and it has negative consequences on physical and mental health of caregivers and reduces their quality of life. The present research aims to determine the effect of problem oriented coping strategies training on quality of life of family caregivers of elderly with Alzheimer. In this randomized clinical trial 72 caregivers were chosen by purposeful sampling and were divided randomly into control and experimental groups.

Aims. The aim of this study was to explore distinct trajectories of caregivers' depressive symptoms and the effects of a training programme on these trajectories over 18 months after the programme. Background. Overall effects of caregiver-training programmes on family caregivers' depressive symptoms have been reported, but few studies explored distinct courses of changes in caregivers' depressive symptoms and followed up intervention effects on these distinct courses. Design. Randomized clinical trial. Methods.

Introduction: We evaluate the association between caregiver (informal) time/cost and illness severity from two recently completed clinical trials of an investigational drug for Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Methods: Changes from baseline caregiver time were calculated and treatment effects analyzed using a restricted maximum likelihood-based mixed model for repeated measures.

Purpose/objectives: To determine the effects of delivering a reflexology intervention on health outcomes of informal caregivers, and to explore whether intervention effects are moderated by caregiver characteristics.

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.

Family caregivers may experience emotional and relational distress due to decreased intimacy and communication with their loved one at end-of-life. The purpose of the study was to examine intimacy behaviors in a family-patient relationship at the end-of-life with the central research question: Is there a difference in frequency of family caregivers’ intimacy acts, defined and recorded as verbal intimacy, affective intimacy, and physical intimacy with their dying loved one when comparing music therapy and chaplaincy?

This study used a randomized controlled trial design to investigate the impact of hospice at home (HAH) on caregiver bereavement outcome. Secondary analyses considered the association between bereavement, place of death, and carers' assessment of support. Ninety-six informal carers of patients referred to HAH were surveyed six weeks post-bereavement about the quality of terminal care. Carers next completed measures of their own bereavement response and general health six months post-bereavement. There was no evidence that HAH had an impact on bereavement outcome.