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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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| Depressive symptoms of Alzheimer caregivers are mainly due to personal rather than patient factors | | Author(s) | Orazio Zanetti, Giovanni B Frisoni, Angelo Bianchetti |
| Journal title | International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, vol 13, no 6, June 1998 |
| Pages | pp 358-367 |
| Keywords | Depression ; Family care ; Psychology [care] ; Dementia ; Cross sectional surveys ; Italy. |
| Annotation | A cross-sectional study was conducted in an Alzheimer's unit in Brescia Province, Italy of 103 primary caregivers who were sons/daughters or husbands/wives, mean age 54.6. Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients were equally distributed among disease severity levels. Variables were collected on: background and context (age, and social, economic and education factors); caregiver's personal resources (health, support networks); objective burden indicators (number of daily hours of assistance/vigilance); and primary stressors (patient's age, gender, cognitive and functional status, and frequency of behavioural disturbances). Caregiver's depressive symptoms represented the main outcomes measure. Being husband or wife, low self-rated health and caregiving competence, high number of hours of assistance and patient's behavioural disturbances, and younger age were associated with caregiver's depressive symptoms. With multivariate analysis, relationship to the patient, caregiver's health and competence were independent predictors of caregiver's depressive symptoms. Thus it is factors relating to the caregiver, rather than the patient, which constitute the main risk factors for caregivers' depressive symptoms. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-980703002 A |
| Classmark | ENR: P6:SJ: QN: EA: 3KB: 76V |
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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