Recent articles about the results of this study include a lead article in JAMA, in December 1996. This research was honored with an Innovations in Independent Living 1997 Caregiving Award from the National Council on Aging. An AD patient can require many years of caregiving. As the disease progresses, patients become less and less aware of their disabilities, while their families become increasingly more responsible for their health and welfare. As a result, caring for a family member with AD has severe adverse effects on the mental health of caregivers.
Families generally prefer to avoid institutionalization of AD patients.
However, when caregivers keep patients at home they require considerable support and assistance if their own welfare is to be maintained. Family caregivers of patients with Alzheimer's disease are affected, not only by the inevitable cognitive and functional deterioration of the patients, but also by lack of family support, family conflict, problems with roles other than the caregiving role, isolation and constriction of social activities. Psychosocial interventions can potentially alter the secondary effects of the illness on caregivers by increasing knowledge about dementia, improving family support and reducing family conflict, decreasing isolation, directly providing assistance in the form of problem focused strategies, practical solutions to common problems and empathetic understanding, organizing appropriate formal supports. The NYU Spouse-Caregiver Intervention Study has enrolled 406 caregivers of patients with Alzheimer's disease since its inception in 1987. There is no other longitudinal study of family caregivers that has been following a sample this large and for so many years.