[Perception of health and health-related behavior of family caregivers of people with dementia]. / Gesundheitsvorstellungen und Gesundheitshandeln pflegender Angehöriger von Menschen mit Demenz.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Family caregivers of people with dementia are a group of highly burdened persons. As the duration of care increases this often results in a deterioration of the health of caregivers. In order to discover how measures of stress relief and health promotion of family caregivers must be embellished, the subjective health perceptions of this target group and the resulting health-related behavior should be considered. This article closes a gap in knowledge on this topic. OBJECTIVE: The main questions of this article are what do family caregivers of people with dementia do in their everyday life to preserve their health and which subjective perceptions of health do they have? MATERIAL AND METHODS: To answer these questions a mixed methods research design was used, whereby 23 semi-structured guided interviews were conducted with family caregivers who support a person with dementia at home and analyzed using content analysis. RESULTS: The majority of family caregivers have diverse concepts of health and health behavior with individual focuses mainly concerning physical, psychological and social aspects. The interviewees mentioned a variety of factors influencing their health and discussed in particular the informal care situation and the related care responsibility. A correlation between individual health perceptions and the subjective health behavior was confirmed by the results of this investigation. CONCLUSION: Against this backdrop it can be concluded that the subjective perceptions of health for family caregivers of people with dementia need to be taken into account because of the influence on the subjective health behavior of this target group. In doing so, new impulses in the design of target-specific health promotion offers can be developed.