7% of caregivers of seniors with dementia living at home using restraints: Study

Those who had strong emotional support from friends less likely to report use of restraints

- Leow Wen Xuan

Out of 215 caregivers of seniors with advanced dementia and living at home, 47 per cent reported using physical restraints, according to a study from Duke-NUS Medical School.

The most common reasons for the use were to prevent falls, wandering and removing catheters or feeding tubes. Restraints also helped to manage the seniors when they became violent.

The study, published in February in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, found the most common restraints used were belts or sheet ties, followed by locked geriatric chairs with fixed tray tables, hand mittens and ankle or wrist ties. The caregivers in the study were recruited from public hospitals, home-care foundations and hospices where their family members were seeking care-between May 2018 and March 2021.

The study found that caregivers who had strong emotional support from friends were less likely to report restraint use. But caregivers who felt distressed and overburdened were more likely to report restraint use. This highlights the need to provide caregivers with adequate emotional support, said Dr Ellie Bostwick Andres, first author of the paper and a senior research fellow at the Lien Centre for Palliative Care at Duke-NUS.