Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

Family members or friends, known as caregivers, provide more and more of the care needed by older people and people with chronic conditions like dementia, cancer, or diabetes. In North America, in the past year more than 25% of people provided care to a chronically ill, disabled, or aging family member or friend. Caregivers provide valuable and often time-consuming or challenging care, but rarely receive training or much support. As a result, caregivers experience more physical and mental health challenges than the general population. Research has shown that caregivers often experience more anxiety and depression than the people for whom they provide care (care recipient). More than half of caregivers experience significant symptoms of depression. Notably, research also shows that the caregiver's health and well-being affects that of the care recipient, and vice versa. For example, a caregiver who is depressed provides lower-quality care and caring for someone who is depressed can result in the caregiver feeling distressed. To address this cycle, more support is needed for caregivers with depression and caregivers providing care to someone with depression. We conducted a review of published studies of interventions (other than prescribing medication) to help caregivers and care recipients with their depression. After searching and reviewing, we found that 15 studies matched our criteria. Overall, we found that interventions, like meditation, counselling, or learning to problem-solve, can improve the symptoms of depression of caregivers for up to a year. The biggest improvements were from a cognitive behaviour therapy intervention. We also found that there is very little information on what interventions can help for a year or more. We are looking into what factors, such as who gave the intervention or how long it was, that might be important in why certain interventions worked better than others at improving symptoms of depression.