Spousal Care and Pain Among the Population Aged 65 Years and Older: A European Analysis

Abstract

Background: Spousal care is the most important source of informal care in old age. Nevertheless, despite the growing importance of this issue, the association between providing spousal care inside the household and pain remains unexplored in Europe.Objective and Methods: This study aims to estimate the prevalence of pain reported by spouse caregivers aged 65 plus that provide care inside the household and to investigate the association between providing spousal care and pain. Data from 17 European countries that participated in wave 6 of the Survey of Health, Aging and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) is used. The analyses are based on 26,301 respondents aged 65 years and older who provide informal care inside the household to their spouse/partner exclusively (N = 1,895) or do not provide any informal care (inside or outside the household) (24,406). Descriptive statistics and multilevel logistic regressions (individual-level as level 1, and country as level 2) were performed.Results: Overall, spouse caregivers report pain more often (63.4%) than their non-caregiver‘s counterparts (50.3%). Important differences in the prevalence of pain among spouse caregivers were found between countries, with Portugal (80.3%), Spain (74.6%), France (73%), Italy (72.4%), and Slovenia (72.1) showing the highest prevalence of pain, and Denmark (36%), Switzerland (41.5) and Sweden (42.3%), the lowest. Results from multilevel logistic regressions show that European individuals aged 65+ who provide spousal care have an increased likelihood of reporting pain (OR 1.30; CI = 1.13–1.48).Conclusion: Our results suggest that in Europe, spouse caregivers aged 65+ are at greater risk of experiencing pain. Therefore, European policymakers should consider spouse caregivers as a health priority group, and take measures to ensure they receive comprehensive health and socio-economic support.

The importance of social participation for life satisfaction among spouse caregivers aged 65 and over

“…Economic and health variables were found to have missing values above 5%. In order to optimise the number of observations, SHARE multiple imputations were used (Barbosa et al, 2021;Jakobsen et al, 2017).…”

“…Finally, multilevel linear regressions (individual-level as level 1 and country as level 2) were applied to explore the relationship between providing spousal care and life satisfaction, as well as the role of social participation in this relationship. Then a null model (Model 0) was considered to analyse the change of life satisfaction as a result of country differences (Barbosa et al, 2021). Since the intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC) of the null model is 10.6%-greater than 5% (Heck et al, 2013;LeBreton & Senter, 2008) IBM SPSS 25 was used to execute descriptive and bivariate analyses.…”

“…Gender and age were included as covariates. Education was evaluated in terms of the highest degree of education obtained, using the International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED-97) (Barbosa et al, 2021).…”

“…Nonetheless, some studies have recognised that spousal care is linked to worse life satisfaction (Langner & Furstenberg, 2019 ; Wagner & Brandt, 2018 ). The higher degree of personal care provided, the poorer health, as well the lower respite care of spouse caregivers (Barbosa et al., 2021 ; Pinquart & Sorensen, 2011 ; de Zwart et al., 2017 ), can lead to a decrease in life satisfaction. Moreover, in Europe, the life satisfaction of spouse caregivers is related to more provision of formal care (Wagner & Brandt, 2018 ).…”

A Retrospective Analysis of Pain Etiology in Middle-Aged Patients with Peripheral Neuropathy

“…Research conducted by Barbosa et al [ 38 ], confirms that pain is a common symptom among the population aged 65 and older in Europe. Over half of the respondents reported self-reported pain (higher scores were obtained for spouse caregivers).…”