The effect education on depression and care burden in dementia patient caregivers

Objective: The purpose of this study is to develop the scale Scale of Care Burden of Caregivers of Dementia Patients and to determine the effect of education on depression and care burden in caregivers of dementia patients. Material-Method: Study was carried out in two stages, the first stage was methodological and the second stage was experimental model with pretest-posttest control group. The universe of the research is composed of caregivers of 480 patients diagnosed with dementia by a university hospital. In the first stage 145 caregivers were reached. In the second phase, 70 caregivers were expertmental group and the other 70 were control group. The data was collected between November 2015 and July 2016 and Socio-Demographic Characteristics Form, Beck Depression Inventory and the Scale of Care Burden of Caregivers of Dementia Patients were used. Cronbach Alpha, Pearson Correlation Technique, percentage, chi-square, in independent and dependent groups t test were used, to evaluate data. Findings: The cronbach alpha reliability coefficient of the scale was 0.88 and the scale was composed of 4 subscales. According to the final test data, the average total score of Scale of Care Burden in experimental group and control group were 59.97 ± 15.29 and 71.48 ± 17.70, respectively. Beck Depression Inventory total score was 11.08 ± 8.82 for experimental group and 20.05 ± 12.82 for control group. The difference between groups was statistically significant (p=0.001). Result: The scale was found highly valid and reliabile. The education given to caregivers reduced their care burden and depression level. Keys Words: Dementia, Caregivers, Care Burden, Depression, Nurse, Education