Depression, Anxiety and Burden in Main Caregivers of Dementia Patients

Assisting a cognitive disorder patient can drain the emotional resources of any individual extensively. Since the caregiver can be confronted by developing mental and physical symptoms with strong possibility, she/he can be defined as hidden patient. The aim of the present study is to investigate the prevalence of depression, anxiety and burden in caregivers of patients with dementia.  This cross sectional study was conducted on 96 caregivers of patients with dementia by using convenient sampling method. After obtaining informed consent, demographic data was recorded and the severity of depression was measured by Beck Depression Inventory (BDI-II), the severity of anxiety was measured by Zung Self-rating Anxiety Scale (SAS) and the severity of burden was measured by Iranian Version of Caregiver Burden (IVCB). To analysis the data, we use descriptive inferential statistics by using SPSS 22. The results illustrate that 69.8% of the caregivers were in the range of depression. Moreover, 28.1% of the caregivers were in the range of anxiety and 33.3% of the caregivers scores were in the range of moderate to high level of burden. In Pearson correlation test, we found that the age of caregivers have a significant relationship with the burden test scores. (p=0.026). In t test, we found a significant relationship between the gender of the patient and the anxiety scores. The mean of anxiety scores of the caregivers of the men and women patients were 37.7 and 32.9 respectively (p=0.039). In our research, we also found significant relationships between the illness duration and the scores of anxiety and burden. In addition, the scores of all of three tests showed having relationships with the support of other family member and severity of dementia illness. Furthermore, in one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), we found a relationship between educational level of the caregivers and the scores of anxiety and burden tests. In the presence of high level of depression, anxiety and burden in the caregivers of dementia patients, more attention to the caregivers is necessary; especially from the healthcare managers and clinicians. In addition, the family of dementia patients should be encouraged to care as a group or help main caregivers as much as possible since our research showed support of other family members reduces anxiety, depression and burden of caregivers.