[Consequences of Serious Illness in Family or Informal Caregivers]

This article is the result of 700 interviews that have taken place during the past three years in the «Espace Proches» in Lausanne, a place devoted to home caregivers. It attempts to describe the reality of relatives and highlight the specific difficulties they encounter in the different roles they adopt or are given by their surroundings in the face of a progressive disease. It offers suggestions to the physicians of this population at risk on how to better support them in their physical and psychological burden.