Caring for someone with dementia is even more demanding and stressful than caring for someone without dementia. Dementia caregivers provide three times as many total hours of care over the last 10 years of the care recipient’s life as compared to those caregivers of recipients without dementia.²

Risk factors associated with higher caregiving burden levels include:

• Juggling multiple roles (e.g., caregiving, job, children)
• Having a small social network or being socially isolated
• Spousal caregiver
• Low education
• Low income
• Cohabitate with the care recipient
• Provide more than 21 hours of care per week
• Care recipient has cognitive impairment and/or difficult to manage behaviors
• Perception of having no choice in assuming the caregiver role^1,3

Dementia caregiving can negatively impact the caregiver’s quality of life, physical health, emotional well-being, and can lead to a reduction in the quality of care provided.¹

• Nearly 1 in 4 caregivers feel caregiving has made their health worse and find it difficult to take care of their own health. These caregivers more often report being in worse health, feeling more physical strain, emotional stress, and loneliness.³
• Caregiving can lead to social isolation and loneliness, which are associated with higher risks for high blood pressure, heart disease, obesity, weakened immune function, anxiety, depression, cognitive decline, and all-cause mortality.⁵

The Zarit Burden Interview is the most used caregiver burden measurement tool in the literature.  A shorter, 12-item version of the tool is appropriate for evaluation of caregiver burden in clinical practice.⁶ The instrument and instructions regarding cutoff scores can be accessed here:

https://www.oncozine.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/ZBI-12_Form.pdf