Coping and Health Outcomes In Spouse Caregivers of Persons with Dementia

Caregiving burden and psychiatric morbidity in spouses of persons with mild cognitive impairment

“…Considered in the context of the levels of objective and subjective burden reported by caregivers to persons with dementia Robinson, 1988;Montgomery, 1989;Neundorfer, 1991;Gitlin et al, 2001), it is clear that the present sample's overall level of burden is much more mild. This is perhaps most obvious in the types of behavioral problems that they reported among their spouses.…”

“…Therefore, the purpose of this study was to systematically describe the level and nature of perceived caregiver burden, as well as the extent to which depressive and anxiety symptoms are experienced by spouses of persons recently diagnosed with MCI. Drawing on conceptual models of the chronic stress process linked to caregiving, and its impact on caregiver morbidity in the context of patient dementia (Pruchno and Resch, 1989;Neundorfer, 1991;Schulz et al, 1995;Wijeratne, 1997), we hypothesized that the subjects would endorse both objective and subjective caregiver burden and that both mean distress levels and the proportions of subjects exceeding cut-points for potentially clinically significant distress would be elevated in spouses of patients with MCI, relative to normative population values. To the extent that caregiver burden is associated with heightened risk for caregiver psychiatric morbidity (Schulz et al, 1995), this information may contribute to our understanding of the evolution of psychiatric morbidity among elderly caregivers of persons with cognitive impairment.…”

The influence of developmental life stage on quality of life in survivors of prostate cancer and their partners

“…As patients reported more physical problems their spouses reported fewer. This finding was unexpected given that the literature indicates that if the patient has more problems, the spouse may be at risk for immediate and long term physical and psychological negative effects [69,70]. It is possible that the sample (N=69) may not have been large enough to demonstrate other significant correlations between patient and partner quality of life.…”

“…In other words, patients in the young-old group (65)(66)(67)(68)(69)(70)(71)(72)(73)(74) found the diagnosis of prostate cancer less threatening than either the middle age or old-old groups of men. These findings were consistent with those of other researches who have found that younger age was associated with more stressful appraisal of the cancer experience [38].…”

Mental Health in Rural Caregivers of Persons With Dementia

“…Greater social support is related to lower levels of depression (Lopez, Romero-Moreno, Márquez-González, & Losada, 2012;Williams, 2005), and a caregiver's burden is negatively related to his or her mental health (Garand, Dew, Eazor, DeKosky, & Reynolds Iii, 2005;García-Alberca et al, 2012). Demographic variables are also related to caregiver mental health, including age (Covinsky et al, 2003;Neundorfer, 1991;Sparks, Farran, Donner, & Keane-Hagerty, 1998) and gender (Covinsky et al, 2003;Mahoney, Regan, Katona, & Livingston, 2005). Moreover, across elderly caregiving studies (i.e., not restricted to dementia caregiving), spouses report greater depressive symptoms than do caregiving children (Pinquart & Sörensen, 2011).…”