Percepçao da sobrecarga e alteraçao da qualidade de vida dos cuidadores informais de pessoas idosas

One of the most important issues of nowadays is the increasing of life expectancy implying an aging population. Taking account this magnitude, this is an important topic on the current society life. In Spain, at the beginning of 2009, the population over 65 years represented 16.7% of the total population (Libro Blanco, 2011). According to Dooghe (1993), between 10% - 20% of these individuals have serious addiction problems, considering all developed countries. Some data of IMSERSO (2005) reveal that 17 % of people over 65 years need help to make their daily activities (Rogero - Garcia, 2009). Fernandez de Larrinoa et al. (2011) refer to the caregiver as the person who assumes the care duties, activity that is unpaid and is taken by the family, seen as the only responsible of the dependent person. Due to the amount of obstacles associated to dependency situation, the caregiver devotes his time to take care of your family. This causes a number of e ects associated with the perceived caregiver¿s burden, since it in uences many aspects of health, social, economic and personnel life (Zarit , Reever & Bach - Peterson , 1980) . This caregiver¿ status is an overall measure of the stress e ect and can a ect the quality of life, understood as the general satisfaction that they have in all domains of their life: professional, social and family. The objectives of this study are the follow: we intend to examine the perceived overburden of caregivers/family that use a day care center; and describe the appreciation of caregivers¿ quality of life before and after look ?