Interventions and their effects on informal caregivers of people with dementia: a systematic literature review [German].

In home-care situations, the caring family members of people suffering from dementia are exposed to a great number of physical, mental and social burdens, and restrictions, putting themselves at risk of falling ill. Caring family members need adequate forms of relief in order to be able to care for the family member at home for as long as possible, and with the best possible physical and psychological status. In the present paper, interventions of relief and promotion and their effects on family members caring for dementia patients have been investigated and described on the basis of a systematic literature review. The presentation of the results shows that psycho-educational, relieving, supportive, psychotherapeutic and multimodal offers as well as counselling and case/care management among caring family members have significant effects on parameters such as burdens, level of depression, subjective well-being, skills/knowledge as well as symptoms and institutionalisation of the person in need of care. None of the interventions investigated, however, covers the entire range of parameters. In order to be able to ensure the individual support of caring family members, a superordinate organisational concept (case/care management, family health nursing) which meets the needs of the caring family members, combines and interlinks tailor-made offers for caring family members is required. Registered nurses could play a central role as care managers or family health nurses in ensuring home-based care for people with dementia. Further investigations on multimodal offers and case/care management are needed. In this context, it is essential to take well-considered decisions on study design, sample size, and result parameters (assessment instruments) in order to gain significant results and homogeneous data.