Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2020 Jan 21;20(1):20.
doi: 10.1186/s12877-020-1421-7.

Research on the health of and interventions for family caregivers of people with dementia: a bibliometric analysis of research output during 1988-2018

Hui Shi  1 , Chen Mao  2 , Jinling Tang  2 , Huiying Liang  3
Affiliations

Research on the health of and interventions for family caregivers of people with dementia: a bibliometric analysis of research output during 1988-2018

Hui Shi et al. BMC Geriatr. .

Abstract

Background: Dementia is a serious and growing health problem, and since most people with dementia live at home, caring responsibilities generally fall on family members. Caregivers are often inadequately supported by formal health services and have poorer psychological and physical health. Our study aimed to compare the contributions of publications from different countries, institutions and authors and present a bibliometric analysis to determine the hotspots and trends in research concerning the health of and interventions for family dementia caregivers.

Methods: Studies published during 1988-2018 were extracted from the Science Citation Index Expanded of the Web of Science. Each abstract of publications was evaluated to obtain the basic information. A bibliometric analysis was used to evaluate the number or cooperation networks of publications, countries, institutions, journals, citations, authors, references, and keywords. The resulting articles were analyzed descriptively, and the publication keywords were visualized using VOSviewer.

Results: Five hundred forty-two articles were identified. The annual number of relevant publications has steadily increased since approximately 2006. The USA has the highest number of publications (36.2%), followed by the UK (12.9%). China entered the field late, but research conducted in China has rapidly developed. The most productive institution, journal, and author in this field are University College London, the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, and Orrell M from the UK, respectively. A co-occurrence analysis of the keywords reveals a mainstream research focus on burden, depression, quality of life, and corresponding interventions for people with dementia caregivers. The keywords "psychosocial intervention", "long-term", "e-learning/online", "communication", and "qualitative research" reflect the latest hotspots, appearing in approximately 2017-2018.

Conclusion: Our study details the performance statistics, main topics and trends research on the health of and interventions for dementia caregivers from 1988 to 2018 and provides a comprehensive analysis.

Keywords: Bibliometric analysis; Family dementia caregivers; Global research trends; Health and intervention.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Flow diagram for the inclusion of publications on the health of and interventions for family dementia caregivers
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
a The number of publications on the health of and interventions for family dementia caregivers by year, 1988–2018. b The number of publications on the health of and interventions for family dementia caregivers from the top 10 countries
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
a Mapping of the keywords; the keywords were divided into five clusters shown in different colors generated by default: burden-related research (top left corner in blue), depression- and stress-related research (left in yellow), quality-of-life-related research (bottom center in red), methods and symptoms (right in green) and description and prevalence (top right corner in purple). b Distribution of keywords according to the average time they appeared in the literature in 2017–2018. Key words in blue were presented earlier than those in red
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. Blom MM, Bosmans JE, Cuijpers P, Zarit SH, Pot AM. Effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of an internet intervention for family caregivers of people with dementia: design of a randomized controlled trial. BMC Psychiatry. 2013;13(1):17. doi: 10.1186/1471-244X-13-17. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Brown KW, Coogle CL, Wegelin J. A pilot randomized controlled trial of mindfulness-based stress reduction for caregivers of family members with dementia. Aging Ment Health. 2016;20(11):1157–1166. doi: 10.1080/13607863.2015.1065790. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. WHO. World Health Organization. Dementia. https://www.who.int/en/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/dementia. Accessed 3 May 2019.
    1. Van Mierlo LD, Meiland FJ, Van der Roest HG, Dröes RM. Personalised caregiver support: effectiveness of psychosocial interventions in subgroups of caregivers of people with dementia. Int J Geriatr Psychiatry. 2012;27(1):1–14. doi: 10.1002/gps.2694. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Richardson TJ, Lee SJ, Berg-Weger M, Grossberg GT. Caregiver health: health of caregivers of Alzheimer’s and other dementia patients. Curr Psychiatry Rep. 2013;15(7):367. doi: 10.1007/s11920-013-0367-2. - DOI - PubMed

Publication types

  NODES
COMMUNITY 1
INTERN 4
twitter 2