Background: While the relation between care involvement of informal caregivers and caregiver burden is well-known, the additional psychosocial burden related to care involvement during the COVID-19 pandemic has not yet been investigated. Methods: A total of 1000 informal caregivers, recruited offline, participated in a cross-sectional online survey from April 21 to May 2, 2020. Questionnaires were used to assess COVID-19-specific changes in the care situation, negative feelings in the care situation, problems with implementation of COVID-19 measures, concerns/excessive demands, loss of support, change in informal caregivers’ own involvement in care and problems with provision, comprehension & practicability of COVID-19 information, and to relate these issues to five indicators of care involvement (i.e., being the main caregiver, high expenditure of time, high level of care, dementia, no professional help). Binomial and multiple regression analyses were applied. Results: Across indicators of care involvement, 25.5–39.7% reported that the care situation rather or greatly worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic, especially for those caring for someone with dementia or those usually relying on professional help. In a multiple regression model, the mean number of involvement indicators met was associated with age (β = .18; CI .10–.25), excessive demands (β = .10, CI .00–.19), problems with implementation of COVID-19 measures (β = .11, CI .04–.19), an increase in caregiving by the informal caregivers themselves (β = .14, CI .03–.24) as well as with no change in the amount of caregiving (β = .18, CI .07–.29) and loss of support (β = −.08, CI −.16–.00). No significant associations with the mean number of involvement indicators met were found for gender, educational level, change in the care situation, negative feelings, and provision, comprehension & practicability of COVID-19 information. Conclusion: Those caregivers who perceived extensive care burden were those who suffered most during the pandemic, calling for structural support by the healthcare system now and in the future. Trial registration: This article does not report the results of a health care intervention on human participants.

A systematic overview of mental and physical disorders of informal caregivers based on population-based studies with good methodological quality is lacking. Therefore, our aim was to systematically summarize mortality, incidence, and prevalence estimates of chronic diseases in informal caregivers compared to non-caregivers. Following PRISMA recommendations, we searched major healthcare databases (CINAHL, MEDLINE and Web of Science) systematically for relevant studies published in the last 10 years (without language restrictions) (PROSPERO registration number: CRD42020200314). We included only observational cross-sectional and cohort studies with low risk of bias (risk scores 0–2 out of max 8) that reported the prevalence, incidence, odds ratio (OR), hazard ratio (HR), mean- or sum-scores for health-related outcomes in informal caregivers and non-caregivers. For a thorough methodological quality assessment, we used a validated checklist. The synthesis of the results was conducted by grouping outcomes. We included 22 studies, which came predominately from the USA and Europe. Informal caregivers had a significantly lower mortality than non-caregivers. Regarding chronic morbidity outcomes, the results from a large longitudinal German health-insurance evaluation showed increased and statistically significant incidences of severe stress, adjustment disorders, depression, diseases of the spine and pain conditions among informal caregivers compared to non-caregivers. In cross-sectional evaluations, informal caregiving seemed to be associated with a higher occurrence of depression and of anxiety (ranging from 4 to 51% and 2 to 38%, respectively), pain, hypertension, diabetes and reduced quality of life. Results from our systematic review suggest that informal caregiving may be associated with several mental and physical disorders. However, these results need to be interpreted with caution, as the cross-sectional studies cannot determine temporal relationships. The lower mortality rates compared to non-caregivers may be due to a healthy-carer bias in longitudinal observational studies; however, these and other potential benefits of informal caregiving deserve further attention by researchers.

The aim of this study was to analyze the impact of being pain-affected and fear of falling on functional performance among nursing home residents, longitudinally. We used 6-month follow-up data from a cluster-randomized trial of 12 nursing homes (cluster level) with 239 nursing home residents at baseline (mean age, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 83.04 [81.40, 84.69], 70% women). The longitudinal analysis provided data on pain, fear of falling, functional mobility, and activities of daily living (individual level). The data revealed a trend indicating that pain-relieved nursing home residents showed better functional mobility over time. The results on fear of falling demonstrate obvious differences in the functional performance of nursing home residents cross-sectionally but not longitudinally. Nevertheless, the results underline the importance of an effective pain treatment to prevent decline in functional mobility among nursing home residents. Further longitudinal surveys are needed to verify the findings on functional performance.

'Prävention in der Pflege gestalten: Pflegebedürftigkeit vermindern, Selbstständigkeit erhalten' published in 'Pflege-Report 2024'