Impact of cognitive and physical impairment on carer burden and quality of life Leigh Tooth Æ Anne Russell Æ Jayne Lucke Æ Gerard Byrne Æ Christina Lee Æ Andrew Wilson Æ Annette Dobson Accepted: 5 December 2007 / Published online: 22 December 2007 Ó Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2007 Abstract Background and purpose How the cognitive and/or physical impairment experienced by care recipients impacts on their carers is not well understood. This study investigated the effect of type of impairment of care recipients on the level of burden and quality of life (QOL) of elderly Australian carers. Methods This article describes a nested cross-sectional substudy of 276 older women (aged 78–83 years) enrolled in the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women’s Health who indicated they were providing care for someone living with them. Results In this nationally representative sample of elderly women carers, 60% were looking after people (predomi- nantly their husbands) who had both cognitive and physical impairments. Carers of people with both types of impair- ments had higher scores for objective burden of caring than those caring for people with either type of impairment alone. In contrast, scores for limitations on their own lives were higher among women caring for people with cogni- tive impairments (with or without physical impairments). Conclusions The majority of elderly women caring for someone else are likely to suffer multifaceted burdens of caring. Keywords Caregivers Á Cognition Á Impairment Á Physical impairment Á Carer burden Á Quality of life Introduction The ageing of the population, combined with a systemic shift away from institutionalised care and towards early hospital discharge into the community, has resulted in increased reliance on family members to provide care to the frail, sick, or disabled. Carers are typically the spouses or children of the person with a disability or illness, and the majority of them are women, many of whom are them- selves elderly [1, 2]. Carers have to manage functional, sensory, and cognitive impairment, and often deal with behavioural problems and personality changes in the peo- ple they care for [3]. As a result, carers may experience poorer mental and physical health and reduced quality of life (QOL), as well as higher morbidity and mortality than others [4–7]. The burden on carers has been linked to many factors, related to both care recipients and to carers. It has been found that cognitive impairment and personality changes in patients with conditions such as dementia, head injury, stroke, and other neurological disorders are linked with higher burden and poorer mental health in carers, compared to those caring for family members with physical deficits only [8, 9]. Carers find cognitive changes to be more L. Tooth Á J. Lucke (&) Á A. Dobson School of Population Health, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD 4072, Australia e-mail: j.lucke@uq.edu.au A. Russell School of Nursing and Midwifery, University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, Australia G. Byrne School of Medicine, University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, Australia C. Lee School of Psychology, University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, Australia A. Wilson Queensland Health, Brisbane, QLD, Australia 123 Qual Life Res (2008) 17:267–273 DOI 10.1007/s11136-007-9300-7