Recent Updates of Therapeutic Intervention Programs for Caregivers of Patient with Dementia: Proposal of Hospital-Based Individual Therapy

Caring for people with dementia is associated with multiple devastating social, financial, physical, and psychological challenges. There is strong evidence that multicomponent tailored caregiver intervention is effective in improving caregiver well-being and delaying institutionalization. In US, the government is actively funding for developing caregiver program and to prove its efficacy through randomized controlled trials (RCTs) to translate into practice. Even with the introduction of Korean Long-term Care Plan, still, the most of the patients with dementia are being cared by the family members. The distress of caregiving is enormous, but structured therapeutic intervention program which efficacy is proven through RCT is very insufficient in Korea. The purpose of this article is to review the caregiver intervention programs of ongoing clinical trials comparing US and Korea, and to propose a tailored, therapeutic intervention program (I-CARE; A multicenter, randomized trial to assess efficacy of therapeutic intervention programs for decreasing caregiver burden in dementia caregiver) for hospital-care in Korea.