ABSTRACT

One of the most difficulty issues which Korea has gone through with the process of aging populationmight be to increase rapidly the numbers of people with dementia. While the number of nursing facilitiesfor dementia patients has been increasing, the major resources for people with dementia should be theirfamily members. However, if the family members do not understand general characteristics of dementiawell, their quality of life might be getting worse and worse while they continue to care for the patient Family and caregives support programs such as counseling, psychodrama, narrating memoirs of family care,and using of assistive technology which can be easily approached in their community were introduced inthis paper. The primary function of the programs should be to make them understand what thecharacteristics are, but the ultimate function would be to imporve their quality of life through instructingthem better skills of communication with dementia patients. Several strategies which can maximize effectsof family support suggested in the last part of this paper.