Psychosocial interventions for caregivers of people with dementia: a systematic review

The content of interventions for caregivers of dementia patients is highly varied. None of the reviews conducted to date have focused on evaluating th e effects of the content of interventions exclusively for dementia caregive rs, and this issue is not well understood. The purpose of this review was t o first identify the type of components (e.g. education, counselling) that have been utilized in psychosocial/psycho-educational interventions for dem entia caregivers, and to evaluate the success of the different components o r combination of components in producing positive outcomes for dementia car egivers. Forty studies were included in the review. Approximately two-third s of the interventions did not show improvements in any outcome measures. A mong those studies, which did demonstrate improvements, the inclusion of so cial components (e.g. social support) or a combination of social and cognit ive (e.g. problem solving) components seemed to be relatively effective. It is important to note, however, that these analyses were based on small num bers and the review was limited by a number of methodological issues (e.g. poor description of interventions). To advance our understanding of the eff icacy of psychosocial interventions for caregivers of people with dementia, a more systematic approach is required. Intervention components need to be carefully contrasted in appropriately designed studies of sufficient size.