The caregiving burden scale among Chinese caregivers of Alzheimer patients

From April 1996 to January 1997, a total of 76 Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients and their caregivers were recruited for participation in a comprehensive assessment at the Veterans General Hospital-Taipei, a 2,198-bed tertiary-care teaching hospital in Taipei, Taiwan. The AD patients responded to the Chinese version of the Cognitive Abilities Screening Instrument. Primary caregivers rated the patients using the Symptom Check List-90 (SLC-90) and the Revised Memory and Behavior Problems Checklist and then rated themselves with the caregiving burden scale (CBS), coping strategies scale and the short version of the Geriatric Depression Score (GDS-S). The internal consistency of the CBS, as assessed by Cronbach's α, was 0.849. The correlations between the CBS, SCL-90 and GDS-S ranged from 0.435 to 0.698. The CBS scores increased with disease progression and were higher among spouse caregivers than adult children caregivers. Multiple-regression analysis revealed that caregivers with higher CBS scores were more likely to have lower education levels and to use the meaning subscales of coping strategies, and that these caregivers' patients had greater disruptive behavior and were older (R² = 0.727, p = 0.001). The current study establishes the reliability and validity of the Chinese version of the CBS for assessment of Chinese caregivers of AD patients.