Husbands and Wives as Caregivers: Antecedents of Depression and Burden

Abstract

Contrasting predictors of depression among 101 men and 214 women providing care to spouses suffering from Alzheimer's Disease indicated that the sole predictor for husbands was ill health, whereas for wives less emotional investment was also predictive. While there were no significant predictors for burden among husbands, for wives, burden was associated with poorer health, less emotional investment, greater spouse impairment, and provision of more assistance with tasks.

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

“…The CES-D was designed to measure depressive symptoms in nonpsychiatric subjects and has been used with spousal dementia caregiving populations (Pruchno and Resch, 1989;Robinson, 1989). Its 20 items are each rated on a four-point response scale corresponding to the frequency of the symptom in the preceding week.…”

“…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.…”

Predictors of sense of competence in caregivers of demented persons

“…Barusch and Spaid [18] and Pruchno and Resch [23] did not And an empirical relationship between the extent of the caregiver's participation in care, and burden. Despite this result, participation in care by the caregiver is theoretically relevant.…”

“…In a number of studies, the burden of caregiving was found to be lower for male caregivers [3,23,28], although other studies reported no such gender differences [19,20,29]. Quayhagen and Quayhagen [30] found that the relationship between perceived social support and well-being was moderated by gender.…”

Evaluation eines psychoedukativen Kurses für Angehörige von Schlaganfallpatienten

“…Seitdem hat die so genannte Caregiving-Forschung eine kaum noch zu überblickende Vielfalt an Studien hervorgebracht, die sich mit den Auswirkungen der Pflege auf die Angehörigen befassen (im Überblick: Biegel & Blum, 1990;Gatz, Bengtson & Blum, 1990;Han & Haley, 1999;Low, Payne & Roderick, 1999;Vitaliano, Zhang & Scanlan, 2003 Zur Erfassung der Beeinträchtigung der psychischen Gesundheit kamen vor allem diverse Depressionsinventare zum Einsatz (Haley, Levine, Brown, Berry & Hughes, 1987;Moritz, Kasl & Berkman, 1989;Pruchno & Resch, 1989;Schulz, Tompkins & Rau, 1988;Stein, Gordon, Hibbard & Sliwinski, 1992). Weitere…”