Study on the mental health status of nursing staff and family members of elderly patients with senile dementia

doi:10.3969/j.issn.1006-7256.2014.01.004

Abstract：Objective:To study the mental health status of nursing staff and family members of hospitalized elderly patients with senile dementia.Methods:An investigation was made on the sociodemographic characteristics of ward nurses ,caregivers and family members of the hosptalized elderly patients with dementia in 2 medical institutions of a certain district in Shanghai city .The depression and exhaustion as-sessment scale was used to assess and analyze the data .Results:The difference in the comprison of the depression score with the positive rate of depressive symptoms in two -time assessment was not statistically significant ( P>0.05);the depression score and the positive rate in caregivers significantly reduced at the beginning of employment and after working for 3 months(P<0.01);the emotional exhaustion and personality dissociation scores increased ( P<0.05);the depression score of family members was significantly higher at the early stage of admission of the patints than that after hospitalization for 3 months(P<0.01);the emotional exhaustion decreased to some extent after the patients were admitted for 3 months(P<0.05).Conclusion:The depression and emotional exhaustion is in higher level in nurses all the time.The risk of suffering from job burnout in caregivers will be increased as the working time prolonged .