Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most prevalent neurodegenerative disease in the world. Most AD patients become dependent on their relatives, i.e. family caregivers. Providing care to a person with AD influences caregiver's life and leads to feelings of grief, which often precede caregiver depression. The purpose of the article was to evaluate the Meuser and Marwit Caregiver Grief Inventory (MM-...

Caregivers are an essential component of any community. Advances in medicalcare have brought about an increasing population which is reliant on care, and communities deal with most of the burdens and practicalities of public health issues. In order to provide efficient support services, we need to know the challenges of caregivers so that we can address what types of support they require. The c...

PURPOSE This article examines family caregiver burden after placement of a relative with Alzheimer's disease or a related dementia in a nursing home. DESIGN AND METHODS A systems-oriented contextual approach was used to study burden in 276 family caregivers. RESULTS SAS PROC MIXED analysis showed burden to be associated with caregiver age, length of time involved in caregiving, custodial un...

Purpose of the Study This study examined whether caregiving has a differential effect on the well-being of sibling caregivers relative to other caregiving groups and whether race moderates this effect. Design and Methods Using the National Survey of Midlife Development in the United States, 631 family caregivers (including 61 sibling caregivers) and 4,944 noncaregivers were identified. Hierar...

Elderly (n = 22) and young (n = 15) primary family caregivers of persons diagnosed with dementia and nonprimary caregivers (n = 13) were interviewed to assess their commitment to caregiving, internalization of the caregiving role (i.e., autonomy and self-determination), well-being, and appraisal of problematic situations. Primary caregivers reported a higher level of moral commitment than nonpr...

BACKGROUND The literature on family caregiving for stroke patients is reviewed with the goals of (1) evaluating the effects of stroke caregiving on caregivers' well-being, (2) outlining deficiencies and methodological limitations of current research, and (3) outlining policy and practice implications of current studies. SUMMARY OF REVIEW A total of 20 published stroke caregiving research arti...

BACKGROUND Identification of family caregivers who are burdened by the caregiving experience is vital to prevention of poor outcomes associated with caregiving. The Zarit Burden Interview (ZBI), a well-known measure of caregiving burden in caregivers of patients with dementia, has been used without being validated in caregivers of patients with heart failure (HF). PURPOSE The purpose of this ...

This article argues for the concurrent and comparative use of genograms and ecomaps in family caregiving research. A genogram is a graphic portrayal of the composition and structure of one's family and an ecomap is a graphic portrayal of personal and family social relationships. Although development and utilization of genograms and ecomaps is rooted in clinical practice with families, as resear...

A patient's ability to be cared for and to die at home is heavily dependent upon the efforts of family caregivers. Considerable stresses are associated with such caregiving, including physical, psychosocial and financial burdens. Research has shown that unmet needs and dissatisfaction with care can lead to negative outcomes for caregivers. While many family caregivers also report caregiving as ...