An Important Problem for Caregivers of Dementia Patients: The Burden of Care

East African Scholars J Med Sci, vol.2, no.3, pp.120-124, 2019 (Peer-Reviewed Journal)

Abstract: Dementia is a chronic disease that causes care dependency in daily life activities of individuals as a result of

impaired cognitive functions and loss of existing cognitive abilities such as memory, speech, and attention. The

progression of the disease and the dependence on the support enhance the care needs of patients supplied by caregivers.

Caregivers of patients with dementia are suffering from psychological, physical, financial problems and social isolation.

This increases the care burden and makes caregiver a secondary unseen patient.In the literature, it can be observed that

many factors,especially the severity of disease, dependency level, gender of caregiver, age, education status, affect the

care burden. Making initiatives for the factors that cause the burden on caregivers of dementia patients has an important

role in reducing the burden of care. For this reason, caregivers should be supported in physical, psychological, financial

and social areas, and the poor physical and psychological conditions which they experience due to care should be

corrected and the care costs of the individuals should be reduced to the lowest levels. In this review, we aimed to

examine the care burden experienced by relatives of patients with dementia.

Keywords: Dementia, Dementia Patients, Burden, Caregivers, Patients, Nursing.