Caregiver support groups: factors affecting use of services

Use of time-limited psychoeducational support groups by family caregivers to help frail elderly people in the community reflects a mixture of predisposing, enabling, and need factors. Using multivariate regression methods that control for dependent-variable censoring, the authors found that attendance in support groups by primary caregivers was greater for those who were older, who had a secondary informal caregiver involved in providing care, or who had significant health problems. Attendance was greater also for those caring for Alzheimer's victims and for those experiencing higher levels of burden in their caregiving role. In English-language groups, Mexican American caregivers showed markedly lower attendance than Anglo American caregivers, but in Spanish-language groups attendance by Mexican American caregivers was essentially the same as that of the Anglo Americans in English-language groups. Data for this study are from a federally funded support group demonstration project conducted in a southwestern metropolitan area.