Guideline 6: Supporting carers' emotional & informational needs

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ACTIVITY: Test yourself

LEARNING OUTCOMES: In this section, you will explore the emotional needs of carers as well as strategies to provide carers support. You will also consider the common information needs of carers and learn tips in how to address them.

As you would remember from the first section in this training, carers have similar rates of anxiety and depression as patients, and report more unmet needs.

The following questions will dig deeper into these issues:

More than a quarter of cancer carers meet the clinical criteria for depression.

True: In a study of cancer carers: 69% of carers screened positively for distress, 35% for anxiety, and 27% for depression. ⁴⁴

Higher levels of carer distress are found when the patient has poor physical functioning and/or advanced disease.

Higher levels of carer distress are found when the patient is distressed, has poor physical functioning, advanced disease, and when carers report high caregiver burden and little support from others. ⁴⁴

Patient and carer mental health are independent of one another.

A study of 484 advanced cancer patients and their carers identified that the mental health of caregivers at Time 1 significantly influenced the patient’s mental health at Time 2. This highlights the interdependence of the patient-carer dyad, and importance of providing psychological support to distressed carers. ⁷⁰

20% of cancer carers report having more than 10 unmet emotional and informational needs.

It’s actually 44% of carers report having >10 unmet needs. A 2015 study published in Cancer examined the unmet needs of 188 carers of patients diagnosed with lung, urological, or gastrointestinal cancer from Germany. Of all caregivers 14% had no unmet needs, 42% reported <10 unmet="" needs,="" and="" 44%="" reported="" having="">10 unmet needs. ⁴⁴

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