Document Type : Systematic Reviews
Authors
1 Research Committee, school of Rehabilitation, shahid Beheshtiu University of medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
2 Department of Occupational Therapy, School of Rehabilitation, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
Abstract
Background: Caregivers are those who are responsible for helping old, sick, or disabled people. Most care services are provided by family members as primary caregivers. Taking care of the elderly requires a lot of expenses and physical and psychosocial pressure, which ultimately leads to a decrease in caregivers’ quality of life and care service quality. With the increasing proportion of people aged 60 and over and advances in medicine and technology to extend life, concerns about care for the elderly are increasing.
Methods: The current systematic review study reviewed systematically the effects of intervention on burden on primary caregivers of community-dwelling older adults and identify influential factors in caregiving problems and challenges. In this study, 354 articles, published in peer-reviewed journals from 2000 to 2023, were extracted from different databases, including Embase, PubMed, and Scopus. The agreement rate in relation to the search of the articles that was done by the first and third author was 93%. In addition, the quality of these articles was assessed through PEDro scale, their abstract and full texts were thoroughly analyzed by the second and fourth author, and the agreement rate in this regard was 89% too.
Results: In total, 13 articles included in the review based on inclusion and exclusion criteria. All the thirteen eligible articles reviewed in this study were of medium to high quality with a score of 5 or above on the PEDro scale. These articles centered on direct interventions for older adults (four articles), interventions for caregivers (five articles), and interventions for both (four articles which direct caregiver interventions are the most efficient approach on reducing caregiver burden among them. The results of these studies were analyzed with respect to variations in the burden, stress, and depression of caregivers.
Conclusion: Based on the results, it is concluded that direct caregiver intervention is the most efficient approach on reducing caregiver burden. Furthermore, the design and evaluation of individualized programs can be highly effective in enhancing the impact of intervention and devising better subsequent programs.
Keywords
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