Are all caregivers created equal? Stress in caregivers to adults with and without dementia
UMass Chan Affiliations
Meyers Primary Care InstituteDepartment of Quantitative Health Sciences
Department of Medicine, Division of Geriatric Medicine
Document Type
Journal ArticlePublication Date
2006-07-13Keywords
Adaptation, PsychologicalAged
Caregivers
*Cost of Illness
*Dementia
Female
Health Status
Humans
Male
Socioeconomic Factors
*Stress, Psychological
United States
Biostatistics
Epidemiology
Geriatrics
Health Services Research
Mental and Social Health
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
OBJECTIVE: Caregiving for older adults is stressful; however, by treating caregivers as a homogenous group, it is possible that stress-related factors are misrepresented for some. This study of 349 elderly caregivers explored mediators of the caregiving / stress relationship for caregivers to adults with (n = 106), and without (n = 243) dementia. METHODS: The sample was from the Caregiver Study of Osteoporotic Fractures (CG-SOF), ancillary to SOF, a four-site cohort of 9,704 women. RESULTS: Stress was higher (p < .001) in dementia than nondementia caregivers (m = 19.85; 16.45). For caregivers overall, intensity and recipient problems were associated with stress but mediated through role captivity. However, relationships differed when stratified by recipient dementia status. Only recipient problems among nondementia caregivers was mediated through captivity. DISCUSSION: Results confirm previous findings of lower stress among nondementia caregivers and suggest that different factors influence caregivers' appraisal of the situation, including their perception of stress, based on recipients' dementia status.Source
J Aging Health. 2006 Aug;18(4):534-51. Link to article on publisher's siteDOI
10.1177/0898264306289620Permanent Link to this Item
http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14038/47646PubMed ID
16835388Related Resources
Link to Article in PubMedae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1177/0898264306289620