The Caregiving Burden Scale among Chinese Caregivers of Alzheimer Patients

Abstract

From April 1996 to January 1997, a total of 76 Alzheimer’s disease (AD) patients and their caregivers were recruited for participation in a comprehensive assessment at the Veterans General Hospital-Taipei, a 2,198-bed tertiary-care teaching hospital in Taipei, Taiwan. The AD patients responded to the Chinese version of the Cognitive Abilities Screening Instrument. Primary caregivers rated the patients using the Symptom Check List-90 (SLC-90) and the Revised Memory and Behavior Problems Checklist and then rated themselves with the caregiving burden scale (CBS), coping strategies scale and the short version of the Geriatric Depression Score (GDS-S). The internal consistency of the CBS, as assessed by Cronbach’s α, was 0.849. The correlations between the CBS, SCL-90 and GDS-S ranged from 0.435 to 0.698. The CBS scores increased with disease progression and were higher among spouse caregivers than adult children caregivers. Multiple-regression analysis revealed that caregivers with higher CBS scores were more likely to have lower education levels and to use the meaning subscales of coping strategies, and that these caregivers’ patients had greater disruptive behavior and were older (R² = 0.727, p = 0.001). The current study establishes the reliability and validity of the Chinese version of the CBS for assessment of Chinese caregivers of AD patients.

Effect of neuropsychiatric symptoms of Alzheimer's disease on Chinese and American caregivers

“…Research has found that spouse caregivers report higher burden than non-spouse caregivers (Deimling et al, 1989;Montgomery and Kosloski, 1994;Fuh et al, 1999). However, the current study revealed that spouses had similar odds of developing caregiver distress for all behavioral problems compared with non-spouse caregivers at each center and regardless of ethnicity.…”

Self-Efficacy Partially Mediates between Social Support and Health-Related Quality of Life in Family Caregivers for Dementia Patients in Shanghai

“…Cronbach's alpha for the total BPSD score was 0.816, test-retest reliability was 0.89 (p < 0.001) [34]. The scale has been extensively used as an index of the cognitive, emotional and functional impact of caregiving and showed satisfactory convergent validity [34,35,36]. …”

Severity and prevalence of behavioral and psychological symptoms among patients of different dementia stages in Taiwan

“…Liu et al reported a high prevalence of BPSD in Taiwanese patients with AD, and suggested that these symptoms were associated with cognitive deficits 11 . In a Taiwanese study, several clinical dementia stages 10 and more behavioral disturbances 12 were been reported to be the associative factors of caregiver burden. Huang et al 13 found that caregiver burden was significantly negatively correlated with CDR stages, and it was presumed that a patient with dementia was more difficult to take care of during the early and middle stage of disease, in which they had more BPSD.…”

“…In Taiwan, approximately 80% of the care for dementia patients is provided within the community by family members, and over half (56.6%) of main caregivers spend more than 8 hours per day caregiving 10 . Liu et al reported a high prevalence of BPSD in Taiwanese patients with AD, and suggested that these symptoms were associated with cognitive deficits 11 .…”