engleski

Are the costs of caregivers (of patients with dementia) exhaustion really invisible?

In clinical work we often meet patients with dementia whose caregivers are driven to exhaustion. More over the administration and insurance companies do not recognise these costs. The ''burden'' of 24 hour-a-day care for a patient with dementia leads to ''burn out'' as well as certain disturbances of mental or physical health of partners or other family members. Moreover, patients with dementia are already elderly and prone to disease. We would like to present two cases of marital partners- caregivers of patients with dementia, who have had serious health problems that appeared during the years of care for their ill partners. Case 1 S.G. a 82 year old man, brought his wife with AD to the Psychiatric Hospital in 2007 for the first time. She was disorganized abd anxious and had insomnia. The score on MMSE was 14/30. One of the questions her partber was asked whether he was capable to take care of his wife needs. The advantage was that the patient was more cooperable and less anxious when her lifelong partner was nearby. She could spend hours just listening to his stories about World War II and his own trauma. Two years later the man has had heart attack. Therecovery lasted three months including hospitalization in the acute coronary unit and a rehabilitation programme in bath. During that period of time his wife was rehospitalized. Case 2 A.Z. a 64 year old woman has been taking the care of her husband with vascular dementia for four years. She also took care of any legal problems that they have had with their accommodation and housekeeping without any help. The exhaustion and sleep deprivation resulted with psychotic decompensation and she was hospitalized for 56 days. We would like to emphasize that the health problems of our patients did not only simple concede with the period of care for their ill partners but could be related to the exhaustion and stress caused by their partner's disabling disease

Caregivers ; dementia

Indexed / Abstracted in: Neuroscience Citation Index ; EMBASE / Excerpta Medica