Gain in the Caregiving Experience: Where Are We? What Next?

Kramer, Betty J.

doi:10.1093/geront/37.2.218

Cited by 521 publications

(463 citation statements)

References 72 publications

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“…The present findings also suggest that this component of problem solving is implicated in caregiver well-being. Many caregivers thrive in their role and experience personal fulfillment (Kramer, 1997). Perhaps caregivers who have a lower negative orientation are more inclined to find personal meaning in their activities, or alternatively, their caregiver experience (and their relationship with the care recipient) is not compromised by the distress and pessimism that typically characterizes a negative orientation.…”

Section: Overall Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Family Caregivers of Women with Physical Disabilities

Rivera

Elliott

Berry

et al. 2006

J Clin Psychol Med Settings

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Cross-sectional, correlational analyses of data from two separate studies were conducted to examine the correlates of adjustment among family caregivers of women with disabilities. Participants included 40 caregivers of women with spinal cord injuries in the first study and 53 caregivers of women with cerebral palsy, traumatic brain injury, and other neuromuscular disabilities in the second study. It was hypothesized that a negative problem-solving style would be associated with greater caregiver distress in both studies, and that caregiver adjustment would be associated with care recipient depression in the second study. As expected, results indicated that a higher negative orientation toward solving problems was associated with caregiver depression and lower well-being. However, in the second study, caregiver characteristics were not associated with care recipient depression. These data indicate that considerable variability exists in caregiver adjustment. Methodological limitations and the implications for research, service, and policy formation are! discussed. KeywordsCaregiver; Women; Disability Family caregivers of women with physical disabilitiesAs health care programs continue to circumscribe their service to persons with chronic, debilitating health conditions, many family members are compelled to assume caregiving roles (Hoffman, Rice, & Sung, 1996). In fact, available data indicate that family caregivers " … constitute the largest group of care providers" in the United States (Parish, Pomeranz-Essley, & Braddock, 2003, p. 174), and as they provide the majority of long-term care in this country, the market value of their activity far exceeds that spent on formal health care and nursing home care (Vitaliano, Young, & Zhang, 2004, p. 13). Yet family caregivers function as de facto healthcare providers without adequate training or appropriate remuneration (Shewchuk & Elliott, 2000): They are expected to operate competently as extensions of health care systems, often performing complex medical and therapeutic tasks, helping a loved one perform and adhere to therapeutic regimens .Caregiving is often associated with many deleterious effects on the caregiver (Donelan, Falik, & DesRoaches, 2001;Vitaliano, Zhang, & Scanlan, 2003). However, this work has been largely Correspondence to: Patricia A. Rivera. NIH Public Access NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript restricted to studies of care recipients who have degenerative diseases (e.g., Alzheimer's disease, dementias). These experiences are ultimately time-limited, contingent upon the eventual progression of the disease. The stress of these caregiving scenarios is unlike that associated with assisting individuals with permanently and severely disabling conditions, in which the care recipient is impaired but has a considerable life expectancy. To date, little research has addressed the impact of caregiving for people with severe physical disabilities who now have considerable life expectancies, and the research that...

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Section: Overall Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Family Caregivers of Women with Physical Disabilities

Rivera

Elliott

Berry

et al. 2006

J Clin Psychol Med Settings

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“…In the present sample, about 88% of the informal caregivers provide care to a family member (partner, parent, children, sister, or brother). Previous research has shown that providing informal care to close family members involves a relatively larger negative subjective burden (both physically and emotionally) than providing care to non-family members (Hughes et al, 1999;Kramer, 1997). If this evidence is confirmed, a stronger inverse relationship between hours of provided informal care and well-being will be found for informal caregivers who are family of the care recipients than for informal caregivers who are not.…”

Section: The Well-being Modelmentioning

confidence: 94%

“…The relationship between income and well-being is expected to be positive, while the relation between hours of provided informal care and well-being is expected to be negative. The hypothesised negative relationship is mainly due to the opportunity cost of time of providing care and the involved negative subjective psychological and physical burden of providing care (Kramer, 1997). It is also possible that providing care has two positive effects on the caregiver's wellbeing.…”

Section: The Well-being Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Monetary valuation of informal care: the well‐being valuation method

2007

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SUMMARYThis paper estimates the monetary value of providing informal care by means of a well-being valuation method. This is done by assessing the compensating variation necessary to maintain the same level of well-being after an informal caregiver provides an extra hour of informal care. The informal caregiver's well-being is proxied by the answer to two subjective well-being questions that were posed in a questionnaire answered by 865 Dutch informal caregivers between the end of 2001 and the beginning of 2002. In the econometric analysis, a distinction is made between the care recipients who are and the ones who are not a family member of the informal caregiver. The results indicate that an extra hour of informal care is worth about 9 or 10 Euros. This equals 8 or 9 Euros if the care recipient is a family member and about 7 or 9 Euros if not. When applying the contingent valuation method to the same sample, the value obtained was 10.52 Euros per hour. This paper concludes that the well-being valuation method is a useful complement to the more traditional valuation methods in the health economics literature in general and more particularly for the economic valuation of informal care: it includes all costs and effects associated with providing care from the perspective of the informal caregiver, it is relatively cheap to implement, and it offers an additional possibility to determine the convergent validity of the different monetary valuation methods.

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“…In the past there has been criticism that interventions have conceptualised the carer role from a stress-coping perspective and this has led to a dominance of negative outcome measures such as stress, depression and burden. However, the last two decades have seen the introduction of the concept of positive aspects of caregiving (Grant and Nolan, 1993;Kramer, 1997). It has been suggested that psychosocial interventions should stress the positive aspects of caring and increasing positive events in order to maintain and improve carers' involvement.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%