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Caregiving across the lifespan: comparing caregiver burden, mental health, and quality of life
Author(s) -
Oliveira Gabriela Romano,
Neto José Fittipaldi,
Camargo Sthephanie Marques,
Lucchetti Alessandra Lamas Granero,
Espinha Daniele Corcioli Mendes,
Lucchetti Giancarlo
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
psychogeriatrics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.647
H-Index - 32
eISSN - 1479-8301
pISSN - 1346-3500
DOI - 10.1111/psyg.12087
Subject(s) - mental health , anxiety , quality of life (healthcare) , caregiver burden , depression (economics) , religiosity , medicine , gerontology , clinical psychology , psychology , psychiatry , nursing , disease , dementia , economics , macroeconomics , social psychology
Background Care can be considered a lifelong process, but caring for a child is different from caring for an older adult. The present study aims to compare the caregiving process from infancy through old age by evaluating differences in caregiver burden, mental health, and quality of life and to describe the factors that could impact these outcomes. Methods To compare different groups of caregivers, we included 300 caregivers recruited from admissions to a tertiary acute hospital: 100 caregivers of children, 100 caregivers of adults, and 100 caregivers of older adults. A self‐administered questionnaire was used that covered the following: sociodemographics, depression ( B eck D epression I nventory), anxiety ( B eck A nxiety I nventory), quality of life ( S hort F orm H ealth S urvey ( SF ‐36)), religiosity ( D uke R eligion I ndex) and caregiver burden ( Z arit C aregiver B urden I nterview). Results A comparison between groups was performed (through χ 2 and anova ), and a linear regression analysis was used to assess the related factors. We found that children's caregivers had more depressive symptoms (higher B eck D epression I nventory scores), better physical health ( SF ‐36: physical functioning and SF ‐36: P hysical C omponent S ummary), and lower pain ( SF ‐36: bodily pain) than other caregivers. We found that caregivers of adults had better mental health ( SF ‐36: mental health and SF ‐36: M ental C omponent S ummary) than other caregivers and that caregivers of older adult had a higher caregiver burden ( Z arit C aregiver B urden I nterview scores) than other caregivers. After we controlled for baseline characteristics, only depressive symptoms and caregiver burden remained statistically significant. Conclusion In conclusion, there are important differences between caregiving across the lifespan. Caregiving for children was associated with more depressive symptoms, and caregiving for older adults was associated with higher caregiver burden. Further studies are needed to replicate these findings in other settings.