American journal of Alzheimer's disease and other dementias
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Am J Alzheimers Dis Other Demen · May 2005
Instrumental help and caregivers' distress: effects of change in informal and formal help.
Family caregivers of persons with dementia rely on a range of resources to provide care and cope with caregiving stressors. Informal (unpaid) and formal (paid) instrumental support contribute to diverse caregiver outcomes. Previous research of caregiver support has focused on subjective measures of help or has compared caregivers receiving formal services to those who do not. ⋯ We expected that greater gains in assistance would be associated with greater reduction of caregivers' distress. Increases informal but not informal levels of assistance were associated with improvement in each measure of distress. Additional measures may be needed to fully understand the effects of informal and formal assistance.