Telephone calls provide effective support for most caregivers of patients with dementia but not for all.

摘要

The caregiver of a patient with dementia is the 'secondary victim', experiencing psychophysical health and socioeconomic consequences (Schulz and Martire, 2004).The non-pharmacological therapy for dementia addresses multicomponent interventions on informal caregiving to improve disease management and coping within a community (Olazaran et al., 2010).We designed an in-home caregiver psycho-intervention with monthly telephone calls to assess the improved disease-management effectiveness. Fifty-two outpatients (23 men, 29 women; 81+- 1 years) of our dementia clinic, affected by Alzheimer's disease or related disorders (McKhann et al, 1984), were included in a mini mental state examination >5. The inclusion criteria required an informal caregiver showing signs of distress to be as follows: (i) >21 years of age; (ii) living with the patient; and (iii) providing care for at least 4h/day in the last 6 months.