Caregiver Burden in Diabetes Care and Psychosocial Interventions: A Review

Abstract

Diabetes is a chronic disease that affects an individual and their family members indirectly. Management of diabetes is a continuous and lifelong concern and one’s family is an informal source of support throughout the process. The present paper is an attempt to understand the varied challenges that diabetes caregivers face daily and attempts to propose some techniques to manage or ease their burden. Google Scholar, PubMed, and other search engines were used for the literature review. This narrative review paper recounts the different intervention studies or programs that have been administered so far in helping caregivers of people with diabetes. The paper also sheds light on how the novel coronavirus—COVID-19 brought about a humongous challenge to both the formal (health care units) as well as the informal diabetes caregivers. The paper focuses on the many difficulties and burdens faced by diabetes caregivers that were presented with various containment measures by governments all over the world—total lockdown of public places, social distancing, home isolations, etc., and with little to no knowledge about the new caregiving pattern.