The Effects of COVID-19 Home Confinement in Dementia Care: Physical and Cognitive Decline, Severe Neuropsychiatric Symptoms and Increased Caregiving Burden. (8th December 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Borges-Machado, Flávia; Barros, Duarte; Ribeiro, Óscar; Carvalho, Joana
• Is Part Of: American journal of Alzheimer's disease & other dementias. Volume 35(2020)
• Publication Date: 2020-12-08
• Subjects: dementia -- burden -- caregiver stress -- informal caregiver -- SARS-CoV-2; Alzheimer's disease -- Periodicals; Dementia -- Periodicals; Alzheimer's disease -- Patients -- Care -- United States -- Periodicals; 616.83
• DOI: 10.1177/1533317520976720
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1533-3175

Abstract

Purpose: This study aims to analyze home confinement impact on individuals with neurocognitive disorders (NCD) through informal caregiver's perspective and examine how it has affected caregiving burden. Methods: Thirty-six caregivers (64.94 ± 13.54 years, 41.7% female) of individuals with NCD (74.28 ± 6.76 years, 66.7% female) selected from the Body & Brain exercise program were interviewed over the phone. The following instruments were used: Barthel Index (BI) to assess care recipients' ability to function independently on activities of daily living (ADL), the Neuropsychiatric Inventory (NPI) to evaluate neuropsychiatric symptoms, and the CarerQol-7D/ CarerQol-VAS to determine caregiver subjective burden/well-being. Results: Pre and post-confinement comparisons showed that care recipients significantly declined their independence in ADL (p = 0.003) and increased NPI total score (MD = 5.72; 95% CI: 1.19 to 10.25, p = 0.015). As for caregivers, results also showed an increased caregiving burden (MD = −0.17; 95% CI: −0.27 to −0.08; p = 0.001) and a decline in their well-being (p = 0.015). Discussion: COVID-19 crisis sheds light on how imperative it is to find solutions and design contingency plans for future crisis, in order to ensure properly sustained support to dementia caregiving dyads and mitigate caregivers' burden.