The findings from the current study suggest that family disagreement regarding care is a salient aspect of the context of care giving for HCGs, and is linked to depressive symptoms, feelings of burden, and physical health symptoms. Familism may play an exacerbating role in this link. Interpretations of the results and implications for research and intervention are offered.
As hypothesized, caregiving mastery played a mediating role for non-partner family socio-emotional support whereas it did not for partner socio-emotional support. Based on availability or absence of specific sources of support, caregiver intervention programs should be individually tailored to enhance their potential impact.
To obtain a more nuanced, emic look at the practice, role, and perceived benefits of religion/spirituality among Latino caregivers than has been possible with forced-choice measures, we posed an open-ended survey question to informal caregivers of Mexican descent. Fifty-eight caregivers described how their spiritual beliefs and practices have been important or meaningful in their role as a caregiver. Inductive thematic analyses conducted by a bilingual-bicultural coder (and confirmed by a secondary coder) yielded six thematic categories (e.g., Methods of Religious or Spiritual Practice, Timing of Practices, Beliefs/Spiritual Perspective as Related to Providing Care, How Religious/Spiritual Beliefs and Practices Help Caregiving). Findings clarify why religious/spiritual involvement seems to have a consistently beneficial effect for Latino caregivers. For example, interviews revealed a reliance on positive forms of religious coping; emphasis on personal engagement and private practice; incorporation of religiosity/spirituality into the daily stream of life; perceived connection of religion/spirituality to family; and experience of close attachment to God, some other divine being, or an affirming spiritual order. We discuss implications for Latino caregiver well-being, interventions, and research.
Using a daily diary design, we examined whether emotional and physical reactivity in the face of care-related stressors is more intense for caregivers (CGs) living with lower levels of available socioemotional support and higher numbers of extrinsic stressors. Sixty-three CGs reported their experiences based on the past 24 hr (i.e., number of caregiving tasks, care recipient problem behaviors, family disagreements regarding care, depressive symptoms, feelings of burden, physical symptoms) on eight consecutive survey days; they also reported on extrinsic stressors and available socioemotional support. Multilevel analyses indicated significant moderator effects: within-person patterns of reactivity to care-related stressors were especially strong for CGs with lower levels of available socioemotional support and higher numbers of extrinsic stressors. For example, managing additional care recipient problem behaviors on a given day was more strongly associated with increased depressive and physical health symptoms as well as feelings of burden for CGs with relatively high numbers of extrinsic stressors. Implications for intervention are discussed.
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