Dementia is a global health issue and the effects on caregivers are substantial. The study aimed to examine the associations of burden, coping, self-efficacy with quality of life among family caregivers of persons with dementia in Singapore. Structured interviews were conducted in a convenience sample of 84 family caregivers caring and seeking clinical care for the persons with dementia in an outpatient clinic of a public hospital in Singapore. The outcome measures included the Family Burden Interview Schedule, Family Crisis Oriented Personal Evaluation Scale, General Perceived Self-Efficacy Scale, and World Health Organization Quality of Life Scale - Brief Version. In general, significant correlations were observed between the quality of life scores with coping strategy and family burden scores, but not between the coping strategy and family burden scores. Compared to demographic factors such as caregiver age and household income, psychosocial factors including family burden, coping strategies, and self-efficacy demonstrated greater association with quality of life in the participants. However, the dynamics of these associations will change with an increasing population of persons with dementia, decreasing nuclear family size, and predicted changes in family living arrangements for the persons with dementia in future. As such, it necessitates continuous study examining the needs and concerns of family caregivers and the relevance of ongoing interventions specific to caregivers of persons with dementia.
Facial expressions are valuable for conveying and understanding the inner thoughts and feelings of the expressor. However, the adaptive value associated with a specific expression on a male face is different from a female face. The present review uses a functional-evolutionary analysis to elucidate the evolutionary advantage in the expression and perception of angry-male and happy-female faces over angry-female and happy-male faces. For the expressors, it is more advantageous for men to show angry facial expression as it signals dominance, averts aggression and deters mate poaching; it is more advantageous for women to display happy facial expression as it signals their willingness for childcare, tending and befriending. For the perceivers, those sensitive to angry men avoid being physically harmed while those sensitive to happy women gain social support. Extant evidence suggests that facial structure and cognitive mechanisms evolved to express and perceive angry-male and happy-female faces more efficiently compared to angry-female and happy-male faces.
Currently, there is no clear agreement on the definition and conceptualization for psychological resilience (PR) in old age. Adopting a pragmatic view, this article elucidates the definition and conceptualization of PR by (1) extracting existing PR concepts that are relevant to aging, and (2) elucidating the contributing and delimiting factors for developing and sustaining PR as guided by the biopsychosocial framework. In addition, a comprehensive review of the tools used to measure PR was conducted to examine how scholars have conceptualized PR. Consequently, the renewed understanding defines PR as an emergent construct which is malleable, enduring, and can be developed and sustained by a dynamic interplay of biological, psychological, spiritual, and social factors. Correlates in terms of physical and mental well-being in the context of aging are identified.
Men and women exhibit clear differences in occupational choices. The present article elucidates sex differences in terms of formal care occupational choices and care styles based on evolutionary psychological perspectives. Broadly (1) the motivation to attain social status drives male preference for occupations that signals prestige and the desire to form interpersonal affiliation underlies female preference for occupations that involve psychosocial care for people in need; (2) ancestral sex roles leading to sexually differentiated cognitive and behavioral phenotypic profiles underlie present day sex differences in care styles where men are things-oriented, focusing on disease management while women are people-oriented, focusing on psychosocial management. The implications for healthcare and social care are discussed and recommendations for future studies are presented.
Consistent with an evolutionary perspective, memory may be enhanced when people are in precarious situations. Particularly, a survival processing effect (SPE) has been found whereby people have better memory for a list of items when the items are rated for their relevance in a grassland context that contains survival threats including predators, and the lack of food and water. In this article, we systematically review research that investigated the SPE to disentangle the contextual effects (e.g., grassland) from survival effects (e.g., presence of predators) on memory. A total of 56 articles (106 experiments) that reported findings relating to the SPE before January 2016 were identified and reviewed. Ten experiments assessed the contextual effect and 5 experiments assessed survival effects. Meta-analysis showed that both contextual and survival effects made medium contributions to improved memory, with survival effect having a greater overall effect compared to contextual effect. Based on a further qualitative review on the scenarios used in the experiments, we concluded that grassland contexts per se may have a weaker effect relative to the presence of survival threat in generating mnemonic advantage. The remaining articles consist of experiments that did not examine contextual or survival effects specifically. These set of findings support the notion that the improved memory for SPE largely stems from survival threat because of the lack of survival threat in the control conditions.
Self-management programmes have previously been found to decrease health problems, enhance quality of life and increase independence. However, there is no literature that examines the influence of the participants' intrinsic motivation on the outcomes of such programmes. This study examined the role of intrinsic motivation in a pilot low vision self-management programme to enhance self-efficacy and quality of life of the programme participants. A positive association was observed between the female participants' perceived choice and perceived competence, two underlying dimensions of the Intrinsic Motivation Inventory. In addition, a positive correlation was observed between the younger participants' perceived competence and the change in their quality of life. The findings provide some support for consideration of participants' intrinsic motivation in the development of effective self-management programmes.
Fall prevention strategies informed by understanding sex differences in the perception of falls may be fruitful. Objectives: In the current research, we examined the consequence of having a recent fall episode on sex differences in fall perception based on the postulation that having a recent fall can lead to perceived susceptibility and attenuate male stereotypic perceptions toward falls. Methods and Results: Examining 549 older adults (337 women) living in the community, men reported higher falls efficacy, less negative perception related to the effect of a fall, and lower tendency to restrict activities to prevent falls. These sex differences were observed only among those who did not have a recent fall episode, and no significant sex differences were observed among those who fell. Discussion: The findings suggest that a recent fall episode may underlie sex differences in falls perception. The implications of sex differences in perceptions in falls for healthcare delivery and outcomes are discussed.
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