The family centered empowerment program can relieve stress, anxiety, and depression of heart failure patients' family caregivers

Abstract

Background: Living with heart failure (HF) patients is a complex condition for family caregivers. Few interventional studies have yet been conducted to relieve several challenges of HF patients' family caregivers in a caring situation. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of an educative-supportive intervention in relieving stress. anxiety, and depression in HF patients' family caregivers.& para;& para;Materials and methods: This clinical trial was conducted in a capital teaching hospital in Isfahan, Iran in 2014. The intervention consisted of two-hour multimedia-assisted educative-supportive sessions for four weeks. The participants were 50 family caregivers of HF patients. The levels of stress, anxiety, and depression were measured by short- form version of the Depression Anxiety Stress Scale 21. Paired and student's t-tests and ANOVA were used to compare the mean differences of stress, anxiety, and depression scores between the two groups throughout a three-month period.& para;& para;Findings: The educative-supportive intervention had appropriate effects in reducing HF patients family caregivers' stress, anxiety and depression at the completion and three months after the completion of the intervention (P<0.001).& para;& para;Conclusions: Nurses and other health care providers can use the results of this study to effectively implement suitable interventions for reducing challenges of family caregivers in a caring situation.