The experiences of family members who provide care for their relatives with Alzheimer’s disease

winning lot of an elderly sexual congress can be quite challenging. When this relative is diagnosed with a terminal condition, with no known opportunity for recovery additional challenges be added. Alzheimers un healthiness is a debilitating condition which paralyzes the tolerants susceptibility to function normally and thus require personalized c ar from either a care for professional or an at-home care turn inr in the form of a family appendage.Since the survival rate with the affection could reach to as much as 15 to 20 age (Coen et al. , 1999), caring for an AD longanimous is a long-term commitment. The experiences encountered by these caregivers mustiness be quite unique and would of course vary among families. It is habitful and then to discover some of the vernacularly challenges face by caregivers in rove to obtain a better understanding of the issue and to develop enamor strategies to address the issues.2. 0 Literature Review Alzheimers infirmity (AD) i s the most(prenominal) rough-cut form of dementia among older people (Coen, OBoyle, Swanwick & Coakley, 1999).Dementia is a slow-onset neurodegenerative throw out of kilter marked by a severe decline of cognitive abilities (Ward, 2007) with unmistakable effects on daily life, mostly memory, which seriously affects a persons ability to carry out daily activities. AD begins slowly. It first involves the parts of the idea that control thought, memory and language. People with AD may wipe out put under remembering things that happened recently or names of people they know.According to Carradice, Beail & Shankland (2003) this disease is more than common among those persons older than eighty years. Given that in that location is a note increase in life expectancy where more and more persons are living longer it is quite understandable that the incidents of dementia are to a fault increasing (Zarit & Edwards, 1996). The prognosis for elderly patients with AD is quite blue. While in that respect are treatment chooseions available that may improve some of the behavioral and cognitive grim effectives of the disease.No treatment current exists that forget halt the progression of the disease of lead to full recovery (Mittelman, 2002). In order to go through that the condition is controlled as far as affirmable and that AD patients are well cared for long-term care options pay back to be sought. While there are countless long-term care institutions, many with qualified nursing and early(a) medical personnel to cater to the needs of the AD patient, most AD patients are given this long-term care within the domestic situation, primarily by family members (Coen et al., 1999). interrogation indicates that family members are the iodins who are more very much than not responsible for providing care for their relatives with Alzheimers disease (Mittelman, 2002 Tettelman & Watts, 2004 and Caregiving & Alzheimers Disease, 2004). In fact health professions usu ally feel it best that the elderly prolong living at home for as long as possible (Teeri, Leino-Kilpi & Valimaki, 2006), and the elderly themselves also desire to be home (Aggarwal, 2003).Additionally enquiryers have a good deal criticized institutions on the basis that often many elderly are registered in these institutions against their wishes and are also often unhappy in these non-private situations (Teeri et al. , 2006). However for those relatives who opt to provide care for AD patients there are considerable twenty-four hours to day strains and difficulties that they face. The financial burden is angiotensin-converting enzyme of the most apparent. Grahm (2001) highlights that the costs of winning care of an elderly relative are very overwhelming, particularly one who has suffered a stroke or who has AD.Statistics suggest that the usual cost of winning care of an elderly relative ranges between $148 and $158 billion dollars (Caregiving & Alzheimers, 2004). Most look int o has, however, discovered that the greatest challenges for at home caregivers to elderly AD patients is not so much the financial burden, but the psychosocial and turned on(p) difficulties faced by these caregivers. Thus considerable attention has been paid not only to the dismal prognosis of those suffering from the disease but also those who have to provide at-home care for Alzheimers patients.Various researchers have attempted to isolate the various challenges faced by caregivers of AD patients. Grahm (2001) contends that the pressures faced by caregivers are of both an emotional and physical nature. Gwyther (as cited in Caregiving & Alzheimers Disease, 2004) mentions chronic stress and decrease health as one of the ill effects of caring for the elderly. Tettleman and Watts (2004) also allude to stress in additional to mental strain as issues of reverence faced by these caregivers.Anxiety (Caregiving & Alzheimers Disease, 2004), fatigue and depression (Mittelman, 2002) and ps ychological sadness (Carradice et al. , 2003) are other issues commonly noted in the literature. The preoccupation of researchers examining this disease is, therefrom, not only on the debilitating effects that it has on the patient but also the demands that are placed on caregivers who are needed to take care of these patients. Evidently caring for a loved one with Alzheimers disease at home is not without its challenges as world-shaking strains are put on the caregivers.Each psyche situation where a family member is responsible for taking care of a relative with Alzheimers disease comes with its own challenges and it is very difficult to generalize specifically about the experiences of these caregivers. This claim will seek to identify and categorize some of the more common experiences shared by them. This research will be of considerable splendor to medical practitioners who have to interact with patients and their families as well as to the individual family members/careg ivers.The findings from this research will be useful to current caregivers in share them realize that other persons face the same challenges as they do and therefore a network of caregivers facing similar problems could be formed where they excogitate strategies to deal with problems together. Medical professional would also have this study and could share this with new caregivers that enter their offices in order to prepare them for the challenges ahead. 3. 0 Research design and justificationConsiderable research has been conducted on the problems associated with Alzheimers and challenges that have been associated with caring for a patient with Alzheimers disease. Previous research has highlighted the challenges faced by caregivers of ill relative but not much research has focused specifically on the condition of Alzheimers disease (Teeri et al. , 2006). Where research was specific to Alzheimers disease, the focus on caregivers was not specific to family members providing this k ind of care, but extrapolate on the various categories of caregivers including compensated professionals (Ellor, 2005 Teeri et al., 2006). Further, research has failed to classify the problems faced by these family caregivers and place them into meaningful categories (Mittelman, 2002 Caregiving & Alzheimers Disease, 2004). This will be a qualitative study explaining the common experiences of family members who are caring for elderly relatives at home. Where other researchers were not specific to Alzheimers disease this research will be exclusive to this category of caregivers. The experiences of a cross-section of such caregivers will be compared and analyzed for common themes.Unlike previous researchers this study will conduct a comprehensive categorization of the most common experiences based on the information garnered from the caregivers. The information gathering instrument will be primarily interviews. The use of interviews to gather information has long been lauded by resear chers. Interviews may either be structured where the researcher directs the line of the colloquy with specific questions requiring direct responses. unorganized interviews allow the researcher to approach the interviewee with a general objective and allowing the conversation to flow in whatever direction it will.Both of these interview tactics have their benefits. The first forces the respondent to focus specifically on the information that is requisite for the purposes of the research. The second reference allows the research to gather a vast follow of information, even information that was unanticipated when the research was being prepared. For the purposes of this research the unstructured interview would be quite useful as the research does not wish to restrict the extent of the responses given by the interviewees.This research will therefore add to the wealth of knowledge about the nature of Alzheimers disease and the direct and indirect effects it has on patient and fami ly. This research will also help to improve understanding of the role that caregivers execute and the challenges they face in dealing with ill and elderly relatives, specifically those who have Alzheimers disease. Respondents will not be restricted in the type of responses they produce thereby allowing the researcher to get a comprehensive and professedly picture of the real lived situation of caring for an AD patient.