Caregivers burden and needs in community neurorehabilitation.

OBJECTIVE

The aim of this study was to analyse the burden on caregivers of chronic neurological patients taking part in community neurorehabilitation programmes, and to describe caregivers' socio-demographic features and needs.

SUBJECTS

A total of 118 pairs of chronic neurological patients and their caregivers.

METHODS

Caregivers completed the Caregiver Burden Inventory, the Beck Depression Inventory, and an ad hoc socio-demographic questionnaire. The EuroQol-5D was used to measure patients' quality of life. Patients' cognitive status and functional independence status were assessed using the Mini-Mental State Examination and Barthel Index, respectively.

RESULTS

Data from 105 patient-caregiver pairs were analysed. The majority of caregivers (mean age 63.01 ± 12.3 years) were women (58%); 72% were spouses/partners. The burden of care was distributed across the 5 domains of the Caregiver Burden Inventory as follows: objective burden (34%), developmental burden (25%), physical burden (22%), social burden (10%), emotional burden (9%). Care burden correlated negatively with patient's functional independence (p = 0.008) and quality of life (p = 0.000) and positively with caregiver depression (p = 0.000). Of the caregivers, 65.7% requested interventions aimed at reducing their burden.

CONCLUSION

There is a need to define structured interventions for assessing, preventing or managing problems related to stressful caregiving situations across the care continuum.