Significance of Burden and Competence of Caregiving among Elderly Patients of Dementia

Elderly people face lot of problems which are age specific, along with it Dementia makes them completely dependent upon others even for the trivial tasks of daily routine. Dementia is a general term for a decline in mental ability severe enough to interfere with daily life, generally seen among the elderly people. Therefore the caregiver's role and responsibility becomes very crucial for the elderly patients of Dementia. A caregiver or carer is an unpaid or paid member of a person's social network who helps them with activities of daily living. The aim of the present research was to study the role of caregivers and their feeling of burden and competence in the task of caregiving. A total sample of 53 caregivers of elderly patients of dementia were selected by purposive sampling method. The sample was further divided as per gender, age and type of caregivers. Zarit Burden Interview Scale (Zarit 1980) and Sense of Competence Questionnaire (Vernooij-Dassen, Persoon, & Felling (1996) were selected as tools. The collected data was statistically analysed by using Student's 't'test. The findings showed a significant difference between the gender of caregivers. This was indicative of the feminine sense of caregiving as natural than in males. The significant difference in the findings of age criteria has clearly indicated that young age caregivers felt more burden than middle age caregivers. Similarly the findings in case of type of caregivers were significant as to show that spouses have unconditional desire to provide a loving and caring environment to the patient. Children also take the responsibility of caregiving wholeheartedly but tend to feel some burden at some point of time. Others are generally distant relatives therefore they feel more burden. Competence in the caregivers is seen more in males than females, children and other relatives of young age than middle age ones, and spouses have less competence levels as they are elderly people themselves. More research is necessary in this field.