| |
Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
 | |
|
Suicidal ideation in family carers of people with dementia
— a pilot study | | Author(s) | Siobhan T O'Dwyer, Wendy Moyle, Melanie Zimmer-Gembeck, Diego De Leo |
| Journal title | International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, vol 28, no 11, November 2013 |
| Publisher | Wiley Blackwell, November 2013 |
| Pages | pp 1182-1188 |
| Source | www.orangejournal.org |
| Keywords | Dementia ; Family care ; Depression ; Suicide. |
| Annotation | The objective of this pilot study was to gather preliminary evidence on suicidal ideation in family carers of people with dementia. An online cross-sectional survey was conducted with 120 family carers, the majority of whom were located in Australia and the USA. The survey included measures of suicidality, self-efficacy, physical health, depression, hopelessness, anxiety, optimism, caregiver burden, coping strategies and social support. 26% of carers were found to have contemplated suicide more than once in the previous year. Only half of these had ever told someone they might commit suicide and almost 30% said they were likely to attempt suicide in the future. Carers who had contemplated suicide had poorer mental health, lower self-efficacy for community support service use and greater use of dysfunctional coping strategies than those who had not. In a logistic regression, only depression predicted the presence of suicidal thoughts. These findings demonstrate that a significant number of people might contemplate suicide while caring for a family member with dementia. Although more research is required to confirm this, there are clear implications for policy and clinical practice in terms of identifying and supporting carers who are already contemplating suicide. (JL). |
| Accession Number | CPA-131018206 A |
| Classmark | EA: P6:SJ: ENR: EV |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
|
| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
| |
|