Emotional and physical health of spouse caregivers of persons with Alzheimer's disease and stroke

Providing care for a cognitively impaired spouse can adversely affect careg ivers' health. It is not known how early in the caregiver's 'career' emotio nal and physical health deteriorates. The progressive deterioration associa ted with Alzheimer's disease (AD) may have different effects on caregivers' health when compared with the potential recovery following a stroke. An ex ploratory study was conducted with 42 couples, equally divided among early phase AD, ischaemic stroke after hospital discharge, and well controls. Cou ples were evaluated at baseline (time 1), 6 months (time 2) and 1 year (tim e 3). At time 1, depression was significantly higher in AD and stroke careg ivers when compared to controls. Over time, depression increased significan tly for AD caregivers with 21% evidencing moderate to severe depression at time 1 and 50% at time 3. For stroke caregivers there was a significant int eraction effect with race: white stroke caregivers' depression increased ov er time while African American stroke caregivers' depression decreased. Phy sical health was not significantly different for the three groups and remai ned stable over time. Cognitive and functional impairment levels of care re cipients were significantly related to stroke caregivers' but not AD caregi vers' depression. Long-term counselling and support to family caregivers is advocated.