[Psychotherapy with older caregivers]

Nursing and caring for a relative can be regarded as an important developmental task, which mainly affects elderly people who provide care for their very old parents or their (spouse) partners. Being responsible for the care of someone can be associated with a severe caregiver burden and experienced as a crisis. Possible psychological consequences are pronounced depressive symptoms or maladaptive stress reactions. For these caregivers, psychotherapeutic counselling can be sensible and helpful in addition to other resources of caregiver support. This applies in particular to improving coping with problematic everyday situations, stressful emotions, and strengthening resources. Multimodal interventions that address methods of cognitive behavioral therapy and acceptance as well as commitment therapy could show good evidence for this target group but have so far received little attention in healthcare programs. Because it is often difficult for caregivers to organize regular visits to the psychotherapist's practice, psychotherapeutic offers would be desirable in more flexible settings (e. g. by telephone or internet-based). The extent to which such supplementary interventions can be embedded and financed in the context of chronic care models is still unclear.