Dementia Plan 2015 'Den gode dagen' aims to strengthen the quality, competence and capacity of services to people with dementia and their caregivers. One of the priorities is to provide support and counselling for the caregivers. In implementing the Dementia plan there is a need for increased knowledge about which interventions that are effective to support caregivers of people with dementia.

Norwegian Knowledge Centre for Health Services was commissioned by the Ministry of Health to summarize the available research on interventions to support caregivers of people with dementia living in the community.

• A multi-component intervention including psycho-education and support for caregivers may reduce caregiver burden and depression and increase subjective well-being.
• Multi-component interventions by occupational therapist at home involving caregiver and patients seem to have a small effect on depression, quality of life and self-efficacy for caregivers.
• Individual psycho-education at home may reduce caregiver burden.
• Psychoeducation in groups, individual support and counselling at home or by telephone and support and befriending from volonteers have uncertain effect for caregivers.

Few studies reported long-term effect. The majority of the included studies are conducted in the U.S. and Asia, where both culture and social structure is different than in Norway. It might be a challenge to transfer the results to Norwegian setting.