Introduction:

dementias are diseases that cause physical and mental disability, with a marked decrease in the life quality and life expectancy of the patient and his/her caregiver.

Objective:

to identify the burden frequency and risk factors associated with it in caregivers of the elder people with dementia syndrome from the municipality of San Miguel del Padrón, La Habana province.

Materials and methods:

cross-sectional analytical observational study (of cases and controls), carried out in San Miguel del Padrón, from January 2013 to December 2015. The authors studied 329 caregivers chosen by intentional non-probabilistic sampling, belonging to the six health areas of that municipality. The dependent variable was the burden, and the independent ones were those related to the caregiver, the elder person and the family. For percentage differences or contingency tables Pearson's Chi2 was used, with the prefixed error size of p ≤ 0.05. The multiple logistic regression with dichotomous answer was used to identify the possible burden risk factors.

Results:

half of the caregivers had burden, and the identified risk factors were religiosity, the severity of psychological and behavioral symptoms, depression, the reasons of care, suffering a chronic disease, and family functioning.

Conclusions:

the results evidenced the need of designing future educational interventions to lessen the burden on the caregiver of elder person with dementia syndrome.

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