[Subjective burdens of families caring for "frail elderly" in their homes].

The purpose of the study is to measure the subjective burdens of families caring for "frail elderly" in their homes and to clarify the relationships between caregivers' subjective burdens and the health conditions of the "frail elderly", the family's conditions, the use of social services and availability of social supports. The subjects consisted of caregivers of the elderly who also were using nursing services from K Home Visit Nursing Care Station (K-Station). We mailed subjective burden questionnaires to 98 families among users of K-Station from December of 1994 to March of 1995. We used the 12 items developed by Nakatani as a scale to measure subjective burdens. Each item was stratified into 4 grade levels from "agree" to "disagree". We asked nurses at K-Station about "frail elderly" ADL conditions in detail, the extent of medical dependency and the will of families to care for the elderly. A total of 76 questionnaires were returned, of which 73 could be analyzed. The greater part of "frail elderly" were female (n = 42). The average age of the "frail elderly" was 81.1(+/- 7.6) years old. All caregivers were members of the family of the "frail elderly" and most of them were women (n = 63). From the result of principal analysis, 2 principles were extracted from the 12 items used to measure subjective burden of caregivers. We analyzed the first principle as "subjective burden of caregivers". From the result of multiple regression analysis (Stepwise method), "subjective burden of caregivers" was characterized by the caregivers' conditions only (caregivers' health status, the will to care for the elderly and anxiety of providing night care). This result suggested that support for the caregivers of the "frail elderly" was important to sustain in-home care.