Encephale
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Elderly people and their family helpers are often isolated at home and do not have access to the professional psychological help that they require. For an elderly population, the trips to consulting rooms are difficult, tedious and expensive. Besides, maintaining a patient at home is heavy to manage for close relatives because of the organization, financial issues and above all the risk of psychological burnout. The literature shows us that psychological assistance is more common at distance from home, in hospitals, in special institutions or specific organizations. However, there is a clear need of help at home. We propose to develop psychological assistance at home for the patient/helper tandem in cases of dementia. This prospective study reports three different cases. ⋯ This prospective study leads us to the conclusion that the superposition of the frame of life and of the therapeutic frame represents a limit to psychotherapy but is not exclusive of psychological support at home. As a supplement to this face to face follow up at home, we could imagine other ways of providing such psychological support, by phone or by telemedicine for instance. Could the new technologies of communication help to compensate the lack of means in favour of the caregivers at home? Although these new technologies are more dedicated to institutions than to providing care at home, could they not be helpful for organizing psychological help at home? However, in order to validate such devices, they need to be fried and assessed at home.