Objectives: Based on a community sample, to assess the reasons disabled elderly people need care, the type of formal services they receive, the characteristics of their carers and the degree of psychological morbidity in these carers.
Design and setting: A community survey of people aged 70 or more years living in Canberra or Queanbeyan. Survey participants were asked to nominate informants, who were interviewed about the subjects' state of health. The informants provided information on need for care, services received and the role of carers. Informants also reported on their own health, including symptoms of anxiety and depression.
Results: Elderly people needed care because of physical disability more often than behavioural disability. Those with physical disability received more formal services and more help from health professionals than those with behavioural disability. Contact with general practitioners was high for both disabled and non-disabled subjects. Carers of the physically disabled had raised levels of anxiety and symptoms of depression, and poorer self-rated health, but carers of the behaviourally disabled did not. Wives, daughters and husbands made up the biggest categories of carers and around two-thirds of carers were women.
Conclusion: Family carers play an important role in maintaining disabled elderly people in the community and this role is often stressful. Formal services have to be aimed as much at the needs of the carers as at the disabled people themselves.