Caregiving in Geriatric Psychiatry

Abstract

Research on family caregiving has moved from relative obscurity to prominence in less than a decade. Studies on caregiving are regularly featured in the major medical journals in the United States; 1 Schulz R Beach S Caregiving as a risk factor for mortality: The Caregiver Health Effects Study. JAMA. 1999; 282: 2215-2219 Google Scholar , 2 Schulz R Mendelsohn AB Haley WE et al. End-of-life care and the effects of bereavement on family caregivers of persons with dementia. New Engl J Med. 2003; 349: 1936-1942 Google Scholar , 3 Emanuel EJ Fairclough DL Slutsman J et al. Assistance from family members, friends, paid caregivers, and volunteers in the care of terminally ill patients. New Engl J Med. 1999; 341: 956-963 Google Scholar the majority of professional medical societies have official position statements on caregiving; and policy debates on caregiving are commonplace at all levels of government. A search of the phrase “family caregiving” on the worldwide web yields more than 150,000 entries, perhaps the most telling piece of evidence that caregiving, as a topic, has arrived.