Caregiving is often a psychologically demanding role, characterized by emotional demands, role overload, and burnout, which can deplete personal resources, and systemic support for caregivers is frequently lacking (Gutierrez, 2026). This paper presents a thematic review of the scholarly literature on caregiver support in geriatric and dementia care contexts, organized around five interconnected analytical themes: the psychological and behavioral dimensions of caregiver burden; the limitations of existing social support structures; the impact of caregiving on caregiver identity, role strain, and self-efficacy; coping strategies and meaning-making processes; and the evidence base for behavioral and psychosocial support programs. Through interpretive synthesis across these thematic areas, the paper identifies four integrated analytical findings. First, caregiver burden operates as a psychosocially layered phenomenon whose relational-affective and identity-level dimensions remain systematically underaddressed by existing support frameworks. Second, a structural misalignment persists between the functional orientation of dominant support models and the psychosocial needs that caregivers themselves consistently identify as most pressing. Third, caregiver identity and meaning-making constitute the underserved psychosocial core of caregiver experience and represent the most consequential translational gap between theoretical knowledge and applied practice in the field. Fourth, adaptive coping and meaning-making capacity are cultivable human resources that support frameworks must be designed to strengthen rather than merely supplement. The paper concludes with analytically grounded recommendations for research, practice, and policy oriented toward a fundamental reorientation of caregiver support — from functional burden management toward the full-depth engagement with identity, meaning, relational life, and human capacity that caregivers’ experience demands.
Quinto et al. (2026) studied this question.