13
views
0
recommends
+1 Recommend
0 collections
    0
    shares
      • Record: found
      • Abstract: found
      • Article: not found

      Impact of mental health and caregiver burden on family caregivers’ physical health

      research-article

      Read this article at

      ScienceOpenPublisherPMC
      Bookmark
          There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

          Abstract

          Caregivers providing care to chronically ill family members at home are potentially at risk for caregiver burden and declining physical and psychological health. This study aims to understand how family caregivers’ mental health and caregiver burden affects physical health simultaneously, controlling for factors such as age, education level, caring hours per day, and emotional, functional, and physical support systems used by caregivers. We recruited 388 caregivers from Kaohsiung and Pingtong region in Taiwan. Caregivers had to be 18 years or older and spend most of their time taking care of an ill family member at home. Mental health was assessed by the 12-item Chinese Health Questionnaire (CHQ-12) and burden was measured using a modified scale for caregiver's burden. Health status was assessed by self-perceived health (SPH), illness symptoms and the number of diagnosed chronic diseases. A high number of hours per day of caregiving was associated with low emotional support and SPH, poor mental health and high burden. Higher emotional support was associated with better mental health and fewer illness symptoms. Higher physical support was associated with poorer mental health, higher burden, a greater number of illness symptoms and chronic diseases, and a lower SPH score. Hours per day of caregiving, and use of emotional, functional, and physical support were associated with mental health, and the hours per day of caregiving and use of physical support were predictors of burden. Mental health and burden were significantly associated with caregivers’ health problems simultaneously. Our results show the important influence of mental health on caregivers’ physical health. Interventions for caregivers need to target health in a holistic way.

          Related collections

          Most cited references31

          • Record: found
          • Abstract: found
          • Article: not found

          Caregiving as a risk factor for mortality: the Caregiver Health Effects Study.

          There is strong consensus that caring for an elderly individual with disability is burdensome and stressful to many family members and contributes to psychiatric morbidity. Researchers have also suggested that the combination of loss, prolonged distress, the physical demands of caregiving, and biological vulnerabilities of older caregivers may compromise their physiological functioning and increase their risk for physical health problems, leading to increased mortality. To examine the relationship between caregiving demands among older spousal caregivers and 4-year all-cause mortality, controlling for sociodemographic factors, prevalent clinical disease, and subclinical disease at baseline. Prospective population-based cohort study, from 1993 through 1998 with an average of 4.5 years of follow-up. Four US communities. A total of 392 caregivers and 427 noncaregivers aged 66 to 96 years who were living with their spouses. Four-year mortality, based on level of caregiving: (1) spouse not disabled; (2) spouse disabled and not helping; (3) spouse disabled and helping with no strain reported; or(4) spouse disabled and helping with mental or emotional strain reported. After 4 years of follow-up, 103 participants (12.6%) died. After adjusting for sociodemographic factors, prevalent disease, and subclinical cardiovascular disease, participants who were providing care and experiencing caregiver strain had mortality risks that were 63% higher than noncaregiving controls (relative risk [RR], 1.63; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.00-2.65). Participants who were providing care but not experiencing strain (RR, 1.08; 95 % CI, 0.61-1.90) and those with a disabled spouse who were not providing care (RR, 1.37; 95% CI, 0.73-2.58) did not have elevated adjusted mortality rates relative to the noncaregiving controls. Our study suggests that being a caregiver who is experiencing mental or emotional strain is an independent risk factor for mortality among elderly spousal caregivers. Caregivers who report strain associated with caregiving are more likely to die than noncaregiving controls.
            Bookmark
            • Record: found
            • Abstract: found
            • Article: not found

            Psychiatric and physical morbidity effects of caregiving.

            Existing empirical literature on the prolonged or cumulative consequences of exposure to the stresses of caregiving is reviewed. Specific goals are to identify psychiatric and physical morbidity effects, report the magnitude of those effects, evaluate research and analytic methods used to assess morbidity, and make recommendations for future research. Overall, the literature indicates increases in self-report psychiatric symptomatology and increases in psychiatric illness among most caregivers when compared to population norms or appropriate control groups. However, there is little information on the population prevalence or incidence of clinically significant psychiatric conditions attributable to caregiving. Studies of physical health effects as assessed by self-report, health care utilization, and immune function are less conclusive but, nevertheless, suggest increased vulnerability to physical illness among caregivers. We conclude with a discussion of why morbidity effects are difficult to obtain in caregiver studies and with recommendations for future research.
              Bookmark
              • Record: found
              • Abstract: found
              • Article: not found

              Cancer and caregiving: the impact on the caregiver's health.

              A diagnosis of cancer affects not only the patient but also their significant others, especially when a lot of care tasks are involved. Some caregivers perceive the care as a burden, while others consider it a challenge. In this article, findings concerning the impact of cancer caregiving on informal caregivers will be described. No consistent results are reported, and little is known about patterns of caregiving changes in relation to the course of the patient's illness. Attention will be given to factors which have been identified as influencing the course and consequences of caregiving. These factors form the basis of a conceptual research model for caregivers of cancer patients. As cancer progresses, care tasks are generated, which can be perceived by the caregiver as either negative (i.e. burden) or positive. Furthermore, these caregiver experiences may lead to negative as well as positive effects on the caregiver's health and these relationships can be assumed to be bidirectional.
                Bookmark

                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Journal
                Arch Gerontol Geriatr
                Arch Gerontol Geriatr
                Archives of Gerontology and Geriatrics
                Elsevier Ireland Ltd.
                0167-4943
                1872-6976
                13 May 2009
                May-June 2010
                13 May 2009
                : 50
                : 3
                : 267-271
                Affiliations
                [a ]Center for Health Policy Research and Development, National Health Research Institutes, Zhunan Township, Maoli County 350, Taiwan
                [b ]College of Nursing, Kaohsiung Medical University, 100, Shih-Chuan 1st Road, Kaohsiung 80708, Taiwan
                Author notes
                [* ]Corresponding author. Tel.: +886 37 246 166x36333; fax: +886 37 586 261. hsingyi@ 123456nhri.org.tw
                Article
                S0167-4943(09)00089-2
                10.1016/j.archger.2009.04.006
                7114152
                19443058
                cd4c76dd-695b-4310-851a-1eb1a771fb6c
                Copyright © 2009 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

                Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.

                History
                : 14 October 2008
                : 5 April 2009
                : 7 April 2009
                Categories
                Article

                family caregivers,cargiver burden,mental health,physical health

                Comments

                Comment on this article