Differences in stress and coping models of emotional distress among Korean, Korean-American and White-American caregivers

Abstract

This study compares path models of emotional distress among three groups of caregivers for elderly patients with dementia: 64 Koreans residing in Korea, and 53 Korean-Americans and 54 White-Americans living in the USA. The results support a common core model throughout the three groups: patient's disruptive behavior leads to caregiver burden, which then affects caregivers' depression and anxiety. Instrumental support was found to be an important factor for Korean caregivers and emotional support was important for Korean-Americans. Only Korean-American caregivers appraised all three patient's problems--patient's disruptive behaviors, memory problems, and depression as burdensome. These findings suggest that stress and coping processes in caregivers from different cultures involve a common core with important differences in the effects of the patient's problems and of social support.

Different pathways in social support and quality of life between Korean American and Korean breast and gynecological cancer survivors

“…Furthermore, contrary to expectations, the BSI-18 measure indicated that depressive symptoms were more significantly expressed by KBG than by KABG. This finding, which is consistent with another study [45], may demonstrate that KBG experience diverse psychological distress, including depression, anxiety, and somatization. Future studies may need to investigate whether people of Korean descent generally express more psychological distress than other ethnicities or whether QOL measurements are not appropriate for assessing Koreans' psychological distress and their appraisal of this distress.…”

Factors contributing to caregiver burden in dementia in a country without formal caregiver support

“…In addition to challenging behaviours, social and cultural factors have a strong influence on caregivers' motivations in their caring role, their coping strategies and the usage of social support and, therefore, have a strong impact on caregiver burden (Chun, Knight, & Youn, 2007;Wu, Low, Xiao, & Brodaty, 2009). Compared with western societies holding individualist values, Chinese culture endorses collectivist values that rate group achievements higher than individual ones.…”

The Effect of Caregiving Stress on Depression among Korean Married Adult Children of Korea

“…[5] found that when the caregiver is female, low in educational level, and when the care-taker is spouse, the caregiver's stress gets higher. Moreover, [8] predicted that when much time is spent supporting and caring for the elderly, the care giver has a higher likelihood of developing depression and that depression is greater when the individual bears the major burden of care giving.…”

“…Caregivng stress of adult children attending to caring their elderly parents affects the depression among them [2,3,4,5]. That is, stress from caring the elderly affects mental health, causing depression and anxiety, even mental diseases [3].…”