A Note of Psychological Study on Family Care Givers for the Elderly

Load for caregiving is increasing as the number of elderly is increaing and their bedridden period is becoming longer. The load for caregiving should be shared by the entire society, but the fact is that actual load is on domestic caregivers. We carried out a survey on the load for caregiving from January to March, 1999. Questionnaires were delivered and collected from 239 home caregivers who have elderly over 65 years old. The average age of the caregivers were 65.0 years old. Our analyses indicate that the caregivers are exhausted mentaly and physically from the load, but they keep encouraging themselves with resposibility as families.