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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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| Determinants of carer stress in Alzheimer's disease | | Author(s) | C Donaldson, N Tarrier, A Burns |
| Journal title | International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, vol 13, no 4, April 1998 |
| Pages | pp 248-256 |
| Keywords | Dementia ; Symptoms ; Depression ; Informal care ; Stress ; Cross sectional surveys ; Manchester. |
| Annotation | A cross-sectional study of 100 patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) living at home and their carers known to psychiatric outreach services was carried out in South and Central Manchester. Depression and behavioural disturbances in patients were identified as significant predictors of subjective burden in carers. Carer distress was predicted by depression, psychosis and cognitive impairments in patients and carer gender. For individual symptoms of non-cognitive disturbance, three features of depression in patients (mood-related signs, physical signs, and behaviour changes), walking disruptions and the patient-carer relationship were predictive of subjective burden in carers. Variance in the level of carer distress was accounted for by sleep disruptions, hallucinations and mood-related depressive features in patients and carer gender. Findings confirm the stressful nature of the non-cognitive features of AD for carers. Interventions need to be symptoms- rather than services-led, if patients are to change their behaviours or alter the way carers respond to them, and are likely to require multi-disciplinary and multi-agency approaches. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-980508005 A |
| Classmark | EA: CT: ENR: P6: QNH: 3KB: 83E |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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