The Care Burden of Caregivers Caring for Elderly with Chronic Diseases and Affecting Factors

Objective: care needs of the elderly are an important issue affecting the well-being of caregivers and the elderly in turkey due to the burden placed on family members. this study aimed to determine the care burden of caregivers caring for elderly with chronic diseases and affecting factors. material-method: this cross-sectional study comprised 342 primary caregivers. data were collected with the personal information form, katz index of activities of daily living, zarit caregiver burden scale and multidimensional perceived social support scale. to analyze the data, the t-test, mann-whitney u test, anova, kruskal-wallis test and pearson correlation analysis were used. posthoc comparisons were performed with tukey’s b test. results: the mean score obtained from the caregiver burden scale was 60.70±14.19. of the caregivers, those who were married, were second-degree relatives, provided care for the elderly for 37 months or more, provided care to the elderly who were dependent according to katz index of activities of daily living, uninsured, in the 85 and over age group, literate or not literate, diagnosed with stroke obtained higher mean scores from the zarit caregiver burden scale (p<0.05). there was a strong negative correlation between the perceived social support levels and burden of care (p <0.001). conclusion: the study determined that primary caregivers bore a heavy burden of care. therefore, caregivers’ burden of care levels and difficulties should be determined, and they should be given professional support including counseling services.