Aging & mental health
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Changes in the health care system have meant that increasing numbers of the terminally ill receive the majority of their care at home. The purpose of this paper was to document patterns of informal and formal care provided to the terminally ill and assess the impact caregiving has on family members. One hundred and fifty-one family caregivers were recruited for interviews from two community-nursing agencies in an urban region of the province of Ontario, Canada. ⋯ They also reported that physical demands in caregiving increased substantially during the last three months of the care recipient's life. As family caregivers provided more assistance in activities of daily living they were at greater risk of reporting high caregiver burden. The results of this paper identify the types of care provided by family caregivers of the terminally ill and the impact these demands have on the family caregiver.
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The aim of the study is to investigate whether elderly patients on long-term weak opioid analgesics could suffer the problems of tolerance and dependence. The prevalence of potential dependence amongst long-term users was assessed by a semi-structured questionnaire applying the Diagnostic Criteria for Research (DCR-10) criteria for Dependence Syndrome. The sample consisted of 25 randomly selected elderly patients drawn from four practices in North Cheshire, who had been on continuous repeat prescription of low potency opioid and compound analgesics containing them for a minimum of one year without apparent problem to themselves or their GPs. ⋯ It could be argued however that the finding may be, at least partly, the result of an undetermined specificity of DCR-10 as a screening tool. The finding, in such a small sample, is interesting but requires critical examination, as we believe it to be the first study of the possible effect of long-term use of opioid analgesics in primary care. The unexpectedly high prevalence highlights the need for further research in this area.
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Aging & mental health · May 2001
ReviewPsychosocial interventions for caregivers of people with dementia: a systematic review.
The content of interventions for caregivers of dementia patients is highly varied. None of the reviews conducted to date have focused on evaluating the effects of the content of interventions exclusively for dementia caregivers, and this issue is not well understood. The purpose of this review was to first identify the type of components (e.g. education, counselling) that have been utilized in psychosocial/psycho-educational interventions for dementia caregivers, and to evaluate the success of the different components or combination of components in producing positive outcomes for dementia caregivers. ⋯ It is important to note, however, that these analyses were based on small numbers and the review was limited by a number of methodological issues (e.g. poor description of interventions). To advance our understanding of the efficacy of psychosocial interventions for caregivers of people with dementia, a more systematic approach is required. Intervention components need to be carefully contrasted in appropriately designed studies of sufficient size.