Psychological support interventions for family caregivers should take gender-specific risk factors into account. Interventions focusing on keeping up hope while caring for a terminally ill family member may be a valuable addition to palliative services to improve support for family carers. Women may benefit from interventions that address adaptive coping and strategies to deal with the dual demands of employment and caring. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Our results suggest that the FIN is suitable for clinical settings. For use in research, we suggest four adaptations to increase the scale's acceptability and psychometric properties. The FIN can be a valuable tool for informing the emotional, physical, and psychological support provided to family carers of people who are terminally ill with cancer.

This study provides a sound translation and validation of the first QOL assessment tool for caregivers of palliative care patients in German. It also adds to the knowledge on the scale's psychometric properties, which prove to be highly satisfactory. The QOLLTI-F may serve as an outcome measure in palliative care practice, clinical trials and epidemiological research.

Family caregivers with certain psychiatric disorders might need targeted psychosocial support to ensure their mental well-being and prevent long-term disability. Supporting hope and functional coping strategies early after the patient's diagnosis might limit development and extent of psychiatric morbidity.

Introduction: Cancer is a leading cause of death worldwide. Many patients spend the end of their lives at home while being cared for by family members. Consequently, the caring relatives face high burden and are prone to psychiatric symptoms. At the same time they are often reluctant to communicate their needs or seek help in professional palliative care settings. Aims: This talk presents the baseline results of an ongoing study investigating caregivers' distress due to their caring role together with their needs and perceived burden, and its relation to hope and psychiatric symptoms with a specific focus on the caregivers' gender. Methods: We report a cross-sectional investigation using structured questionnaires to assess caregiver burden and needs, distress, hope, psychiatric symptoms, and quality of life. Results: Female caregivers who were willing to participate in the study clearly outnumbered male caregivers. Results in terms of specific needs and perceived burden were similar for genders. Results for distress, hope and psychiatric symptoms were mixed. Conclusion: Caregivers of terminally ill patients are a high risk group for the development of psychiatric disorders. Paying due regard to their burden and needs should be a central issue in palliative care and gender specific differences should be taken into account.