Impact on Health and Health Promotion Behaviours in Family Caregivers of Patients with Stroke

Abstract

Introduction: Globaly, stroke is the leading cause of long-term disability with serious impact on personal, family and social level. Functional disability of stroke survivors needs family’s extended and intensive care and support. The uncertainly and the loss of control affect caregivers’ health behaviors and their physical, mental and social health as well. Aim: The aim of this study was to review and critically evaluate the literature related to the impact on health and on health promotion behaviors in family caregivers of patients with stroke. Material-Method: The literature review was based on English and Greek articles in Pubmed, Sciencedirect, Scopus, CINAHL, IATROTEK and Google Scholar for the years 2005-2016. The Key words used to search relevant sources were stroke, caregivers, health promotion, burden. Results: A great amount of international studies focuses on the impact of caring on caregivers’ mental health while relatively few studies focuses on their physical and social health. This study revealed that stress and depression is a serious problem of caregivers’ morbidity. The high responsibility of providing care to stroke survivors’ may induce a great amount of strain to the caregivers. Consequently they neglect their needs and adopt an unhealthy lifestyle. The family caregivers are the “hidden patients”. Conclusions: The stroke survivors’ caregivers are vulnerable to health problems and are considered as to be a high risk group, due to the burden of care and their low self-efficacy. Investigating the informal care’s impacts and the various factors that increase the physical, mental and social burden may better help community nurses o identify the caregivers at risk.