Centre for Policy on Ageing



Depression in frail elders — impact on family caregivers
Author(s)	Maida J Sewitch, Jane McCusker, Nandini Dendukuri
Journal title	International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, vol 19, no 7, July 2004
Pages	pp 655-665
Source	http://www.interscience.wiley.com
Keywords	Depression ; Accident & emergency depts ; Family care ; Health [elderly] ; Quality of life ; Cross sectional surveys ; Canada.
Annotation	A cross-sectional study of 193 Canadian family caregivers of seniors treated in a hospital emergency department (ED) was conducted. Measures included patient depression (Geriatric Depression Scale - GDS15) and caregivers' hours of care, mental health and physical functioning (SF-36) and quality of life (EQ-5D). Mean caregiver age was 60 (±16.1 years); 70.5% were female. More caregivers of depressed seniors provided more care in the previous month (37.3% vs 22.4%), had poor mental health (63.5% vs 47%), and poor perceived quality of life (63.5% vs 50.4%) compared to caregivers of non-depressed seniors. Multiple logistic regression indicated that patient depression was associated with poor caregiver quality of life, and poor mental health in spousal and adult child caregivers. Thus, psychological support may be needed for caregivers of depressed older people. (RH).
Accession Number	CPA-040913220 A
Classmark	ENR: LD6: P6:SJ: CC: F:59: 3KB: 7S
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...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing.