Caregiver burden associated with behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia (BPSD) in Taiwanese elderly.

The purpose of this study was to investigate caregiver burden associated with BPSD in Taiwanese people. The study had a cross-sectional design. Eighty-eight patients with dementia and 88 caregivers who visited the memory clinic of a medical center from January 2007 to December 2007 were recruited. The BPSD were assessed using the neuropsychiatric inventory (NPI); caregiver burden was evaluated using the NPI caregiver distress scale (NPI-D). Demographic data on the patients and caregivers along with patients' cognitive functions and clinical dementia ratings were collected. In addition to descriptive statistics, we analyzed the relationship between each parameter and caregiver burden using binary correlation. The results showed a statistically significant positive correlation between the total NPI-D score and the total NPI score (r=0.898, p<0.001). For individual BPSD, delusions had the highest mean NPI-D score, followed by agitation/aggression, anxiety, irritability/lability, and dysphoria/depression. The symptom frequency of anxiety, delusions, and agitation/aggression showed a statistically significant positive correlation with caregiver's NPI-D score. These findings suggest that improvement of treatments for delusions, agitation/aggression, anxiety, irritability/lability, and dysphoria/depression among dementia patients may reduce caregiver burden.