Effect of Expressed Emotion Instructional Guidelines on Family Caregiver's Burdens of Patients with Alzheimer

Background : The stress of providing care for a loved one who has Alzheimer's disease not only impacts their health and raises their mortality risk, but also reduces the care quality. Family carers of Alzheimer's patients deal with several challenges linked to caregiving, including stress, anxiety, and a high degree of expressed emotion. Therefore, the present study aimed to determine the effect of expressed emotion instructional guidelines on family caregiver's burdens of patients with Alzheimer's. Design : This study was carried out using a quasi-experimental design. Setting: This study was applied in neurologic outpatient clinics of a psychiatric hospital in Sohag City. Subject : There was a purposive sample of 100 family caregivers of Alzheimer's patients were enrolled. Data collection tools: 1) Socio-demographic questionnaire for patients with Alzheimer's and their family caregivers. 2) Expressed emotions scale. 3) Zarit burden scale. Results : The results of the current study showed that, following the application of expressed emotion instructional guidelines, scores for family carers' expressed emotion and burdens significantly improved statistically. Additionally, under the studies pre-, post-, and follow-up adoption of expressed emotion instructional guidelines, there were highly statistically significant positive connections between the caregiver's overall expressed emotion and the total burdens score . Conclusion : Implementing instructional guidelines for expressed emotion has a statistically significant reduction of caregiver burdens associated with caring for Alzheimer's patients. Recommendations : Creating family intervention programs in mental institutions that are systematically ongoing to offer the family caregivers the necessary knowledge and emotional support to assist them in managing challenging thoughts and feelings, lessen the negative expression of emotion, and feel less burdened.