Article
Unmet needs in people living with Dementia: sociodemographic, clinical, and health-related factors across home environment, physical, psychological, and social need domains
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Authors
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Annelie Scharf
- Deutsches Zentrum für Neurodegenerative Erkrankungen e.V. (DZNE), Greifswald, Deutschland
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Bernhard Michalowsky
- Deutsches Zentrum für Neurodegenerative Erkrankungen e.V. (DZNE), Greifswald, Deutschland
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Anika Rädke
- Deutsches Zentrum für Neurodegenerative Erkrankungen e.V. (DZNE), Greifswald, Deutschland
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Fabian Kleinke
- Institut für Community Medicine, Greifswald, Deutschland
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Maresa Buchholz
- Deutsches Zentrum für Neurodegenerative Erkrankungen e.V. (DZNE), Greifswald, Deutschland
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Neeltje van den Berg
- Institut für Community Medicine, Greifswald, Deutschland
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Wolfgang Hoffmann
- Deutsches Zentrum für Neurodegenerative Erkrankungen e.V. (DZNE), Greifswald, Deutschland; Institut für Community Medicine, Greifswald, Deutschland
| Published: | September 10, 2024 |
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Outline
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Background: As the global population ages, the prevalence of People living with Dementia (PlwD) is rising, leading to increased demand for tailored care services. PlwD often have, besides physical problems, psychological, environmental, social, and care ones, which usually result in numerous unmet care needs. With the help of the Camberwell Assessment of Needs for the Elderly (CANE), associations between the number of unmet needs and various parameters have been analysed in many studies. However, there is a need to explore the relationship between the type of unmet needs and multiple patient characteristics in PlwD.
Objective: To describe the domains of unmet and met needs among community-dwelling PlwD, focusing on home environment, physical, psychological, and social areas. By identifying sociodemographic, clinical, and health-related parameters associated with unmet needs in these areas, the analysis seeks to inform the development of individualized, high-quality care interventions tailored to the diverse needs of PlwD.
Methods: We analyzed baseline data of the multi-centre cluster-randomized controlled intervention trial (InDePendent) using descriptive statistics to represent patients' sociodemographic and clinical characteristics and Poisson regression models to predict unmet needs in four need domains.
Results: A total of n=3.672 met and unmet needs were identified among 417 PlwD, most of them (n=1491) were in the physical area, of which over one-fifth were unmet (n=292). It is remarkable that increasing age tends to be associated with lower unmet psychological and social needs, and overweight or underweight with lower unmet physical and social needs. PlwD who feel moderately to severely lonely have higher unmet social and environmental needs, while living alone, low education, indication of depression, and lack of a care grade were identified as risk factors for higher unmet needs across almost all domains.
Implication for research and/or (healthcare) practice: Early identification and addressing of specific sociodemographic, clinical factors and different domains of needs is crucial to reduce unmet needs in PlwD, especially to support PlwD with lower levels of education, symptoms of depression, loneliness and those without a care grade.
Funding: Innovationsfonds/Versorgungsforschung; Project name: InDePendent; Grant number: 01NVF18034
