Interventions to support caregivers of people with dementia living in the community − systematic literature search
Mapping review
|Updated
The Norwegian Directorate of Health asked us to update the report from 2011. We have performed a literature search to find potential new and relevant systematic reviews.
Key message
The Ministry of Health commissioned the National Knowledge Center for The Health Care Services to review the available evidence on interventions to sup-port caregivers of people with dementia living in the community. This work was published in 2011, report number 6. The main findings were:
• A multi-component intervention including psycho-education and support for caregivers may reduce caregiver burden and depression and increase subjective well-being.
• Multi-component interventions by occupational therapist at home involving caregiver and patients seem to have a small effect on depression, quality of life and self-efficacy for caregivers.
• Individual psycho-education at home may reduce caregiver burden
• Psychoeducation in groups, individual support and counselling at home or by telephone and support and befriending from volunteers have uncertain effect for caregivers.
The Norwegian Directorate of Health asked us to update the report. We have performed a literature search to find potential new and relevant systematic re-views. We updated the previous systematic literature search and searched several relevant medical databases. The search was performed in June 2014. Thereafter, two persons independently read through all the titles and abstracts to find potential new reviews that met the pre-defined inclusion criteria. We read 422 references from the literature search and included one systematic re-view with high quality. The documentation showed:
• Cognitive reframing probably reduces depression, anxiety and stress in caregivers. The documentation is of moderate quality.
• Cognitive reframing probably have little or no effect on caregivers burden, coping and reactions to unwanted behavior from the demented person they care for. The documentation is of low and moderate quality.
• We don’t know if cognitive reframing affects caregivers quality of life or social activity because of a lack of documentation.