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Making the Case for Caregiver Research in Geriatric Psychiatry

Received July 6, 2004; revised August 4, 2004; accepted September 27, 2004. From the Dept. of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Box 356560, University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle, WA 98195. e-mail: pvital{at}u.washington.edu
© 2005 American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry

Research on caregiver health has seen a groundswell of interest in the last few years. Unfortunately, most of this literature has appeared in venues not usually seen by psychiatrist-geriatricians. In this article, the authors argue that caregiver research is not only relevant to the geriatric mental health community, but it is especially important to geriatric psychiatry. To do this, they focus on five areas: 1) an overview of caregiver outcomes and metaanalysis of relationships of caregiver distress/psychiatric morbidity with physiological/physical indices; 2) definitions and examples of moderators and mediators of relationships of caregiver status with health indices, including comorbidity of caregiving with psychiatric/medical illnesses; 3) caregiver/care-recipient trajectories and reciprocal relationships among dyads; 4) prospective studies; and, 5) areas to consider in caregiver interventions. Great strides have been made in caregiver research, but much more needs to be done. Psychiatric geriatricians are well placed to advance caregiver research because of their unique training in medicine, psychotherapy, pharmacology, and aging. They hope the discussion of this research will encourage work in this important area.

Key Words: Depression • Caregivers • Comorbid Illness

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