Care-giving to older adults with disabilities could lead to relatively high levels of care-giving burden and low levels of life satisfaction among their family care-givers. However, there is a lack of research examining the role of care-giver wisdom in the above stress process model. This study examined the moderator role of wisdom in the relationship between care-giver burden and life satisfaction among family care-givers of disabled older adults in urban China. A multi-stage quota sampling method was used to recruit 789 disabled older adult–family care-giver dyads in Shanghai in 2013. The average age of older adults and their family care-givers was 84 and 63 years old, respectively. Multiple-group path analysis was conducted to examine the proposed hypotheses. The results showed that care-giver wisdom played a moderator role in the association between care-giver burden and life satisfaction. Care-giver burden was found to only negatively affect life satisfaction among care-givers with relatively low wisdom levels. The findings highlight the influences of care-giver wisdom on the relationship between burden and life satisfaction in Chinese contexts. The concept of wisdom should be used in needs assessment among family care-givers of older adults with disabilities. Future social interventions should focus on promoting care-givers' capacities of reflective thinking, their understandings of reality and their feelings of compassion.

This meta-analysis examined the prevalence of depression and burden among informal care-givers of people with dementia (PwD) and compared the prevalence of depression between male and female, and spousal and non-spousal, care-givers. The quality of studies was evaluated and moderator variables explored. A search of six electronic databases (PsycARTICLES, PsycINFO, MEDLINE Complete, SCOPUS, Web of Science and ProQuest) was conducted from the first available date to the 31 October 2017. Inclusion criteria involved observational studies on the prevalence of burden or depression among informal care-givers of PwD. Forty-three studies were examined with a total of 16,911 participants. The adjusted pooled prevalence of depression was 31.24 per cent (95% confidence interval (CI) = 27.70, 35.01) and burden was 49.26 per cent (95% CI = 37.15, 61.46), although heterogeneity among prevalence estimates was high. Depression prevalence estimates differed according to the instrument used and the continent where the study was conducted. The odds of having depression were almost one and a half times higher in female compared to male care-givers. No significant difference was observed between spouses and non-spouses. Most studies had a medium risk of bias. Results suggest a great need within this population for interventions that are effective at reducing burden and depressive symptoms. It therefore appears imperative for dementia services that are not providing such interventions to do so.

The literature about the care givers of patients with Disorders of Consciousness (DOCs) has highlighted the impact on both mental and physical dimensions of quality of life. This study aimed to: (1) describe emotional burden, quality of life, and coping styles in care givers of hospitalized patients with DOCs, compared to Italian normative data; (2) explore the relationships between these variables and their associations with socio-demographic features; and (3) describe their changes over time.

Fifteen care givers of patients with DOCs, mostly middle-aged women, were assessed using the Family Strain Questionnaire, the SF-36 Health Survey, and the Coping Orientation to Problems Experienced – Nuova Versione Italiana. Eleven subjects were also assessed after 6 and 12 months. Data were analysed through descriptive statistics, correlations, and nonparametric tests of group differences.

Compared to the Italian normative data, our sample showed a worse outcome in mental health, social functioning, global mental component, and emotional role functioning. Furthermore, subjects with high emotional burden had more thoughts of death compared to subjects with low emotional burden. Follow-up analyses revealed no variables changed over time.

These results highlight the need for psychological interventions and support, since care givers represent an important part of an all-embracing support and care network for patients with DOCs.

In this paper we use Alvesson and Sandberg's strategy of problematisation to analyse the assumptions embedded in the development and use of the concept of ‘care-giver burden’. We do this in order to develop an explanation as to why decades of research into the experience of providing home-based care to a family member with dementia has had little effect in relieving or reducing the ‘burden’ of that care. Though some part of this is undoubtedly political, our analysis suggests that key assumptions of the research limit both knowledge development and intervention effectiveness. Especially problematic are first, an overriding focus on the isolated care-giver–recipient dyad as the appropriate object of inquiry and target of intervention, and second, an absence of an analysis of the materiality of care and care-giving practices. The heterogeneity of care situations, including interrelations among people, technologies, objects, spaces and other organisational worlds, appear in much of the research primarily as methodological problems, variables to be subdued through a more rigorous application of method. The high volume of research and acknowledged low impact of interventions, however, suggests that rethinking the nature of care practices, and how we come to know about them, is necessary if we are to develop and implement strategies that will contribute to better outcomes for people.

In the last few decades, a number of researchers have attempted to identify the effects of paid care services on alleviating the sense of burden of family care-givers, especially care-givers to people with dementia. However, few researchers have considered the possibility that paid care services alleviate the sense of burden only among those care-givers who possess specific characteristics. Without considering this point, the impact of paid care services would be averaged over an entire sample, and one might overlook the effects on these specific care-givers. With this background, this study examines the relationship between family care-givers' sense of burden and the amount of paid care services in Japan and identifies groups of care-givers among whom these services are significantly associated with a lesser sense of burden. The sense of burden of 339 family care-givers to older care recipients with dementia was measured using a modified version of the Caregiver Burden Inventory. In order to examine their association with the amount of paid care services received, logistic regression analysis was individually applied to groups of care-givers who exhibit specific characteristics. The results suggested that paid care services alleviated two out of five components of burden, provided the groups to which the analyses are applied are appropriately defined. In particular, two subsets of the entire sample, comprising young care-givers aged 49 or below, and including male care-givers, indicated that their overall sense of social and emotional burden were alleviated by the use of paid care services. The practical implications for policy makers are discussed.