Awareness of deficit in Alzheimer's disease: relation to caregiver burden.

Patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) show varying degrees of awareness of their deficits. To examine the impact of this phenomenon upon the distress experienced by family caregivers of AD patients, we analyzed caregiver burden in relation to patient awareness of deficit in three different functional domains. The relationship of burden to selected sociodemographic variables was also explored. Results of multiple regression analyses suggested that caregiver burden was associated with impaired patient awareness of memory deficit independent of disease stage and dementia severity. The findings suggest that impaired awareness may be an important mediator of caregiver burden, a concern in the management of AD.