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An American study has found that putting a person with dementia into long-term institutional care can be very traumatic for the person left behind at home, especially if they're a husband or wife. If you've never cared for someone with dementia, you'd probably correctly imagine it's a stressful and exhausting task which can wear you down. You might also imagine that if the person eventually goes into a nursing home, there would be relief in the caregiver, albeit mixed with some guilt. Well, according to an American study, putting the person with dementia into long-term institutional care can be very traumatic for the person left behind at home, especially if they're a husband or wife. Depression and anxiety which they might have had beforehand tended not to reduce, and was also associated with the caregiver not being satisfied with the help they might have been receiving from others - for example friends, people next door or children. Not surprisingly, people more likely to institutionalise their loved one had found the home situation more of a burden and a negative experience. And wives or husbands who visited most frequently were doing worse, even if they were very happy with the standards in the nursing home. It points to the need for better preparation of spouses for the change to institutional care. The good news was that anxiety levels did eventually fall but only after some time.
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