While providing home care for a family member with senile dementia is clearly extremely stressful, there has been little controlled research assessing the specific effects of this stress on caregiver psychological, social, and health functioning. To address this question, 44 primary caregivers of senile dementia patients and 44 matched controls completed a series of questionnaires and interview assessments. Caregivers reported significantly higher levels of depression and negative affect toward their relatives, and lower overall life satisfaction than controls. Caregivers also had significant impairment of their social activities, including visits with friends, vacations, and church attendance when compared with controls. Caregivers expressed less satisfaction with their social networks than did controls, but the groups did not differ in objective size of social network or number of network contacts. Caregivers reported poorer health, more prescription medication use, and higher utilization of health care than controls. Results clearly indicate the serious and wide-ranging effects of the stress of caregiving, and reinforce the importance of providing comprehensive services for caregiving families.

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The relationship of arthritis and sexual dysfunction was investigated among 169 patients with rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis and spondyloarthropathy, 130 of whom were pair-matched to controls. Assessments of marital happiness and depressed mood were also made using the CES-D and the Azrin Marital Happiness Scale (AMHS). Sexual dysfunctions were found to be common among patients and controls, the majority in both groups reporting one or more dysfunctions. Impotence was more common among male patients than controls and was found to be associated with co-morbidity and the taking of methotrexate. Depressed mood was more common among patients and was associated with certain sexual difficulties, but not with impotence. Marital unhappiness, as indicated by AMHS scores, was not associated with arthritis but was associated with sexual dysfunction, sexual dissatisfaction and being female.

A survey of 200 rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients was conducted to identify the kinds and frequencies of intentional and unintentional reasons for missed medication doses. Planned and unplanned changes in usual activity routines accounted for most of the unintentionally missed doses, while side effects attributed to the medication accounted for most of the intentionally missed doses. Patients who did not miss medication doses were different from those who did by tending to have more financial resources and social support available to them.