Caregiving across the lifespan: comparing caregiver burden, mental health, and quality of life

Gabriela Romano de Oliveira; José Fittipaldi Neto; Sthephanie Marques de Camargo; Alessandra Lamas Granero Lucchetti; Daniele Corcioli Mendes Espinha; Giancarlo Lucchetti

doi:10.1111/psyg.12087

Caregiving across the lifespan: comparing caregiver burden, mental health, and quality of life

Psychogeriatrics. 2015 Jun;15(2):123-132. doi: 10.1111/psyg.12087. Epub 2014 Dec 17.

Authors

Gabriela Romano de Oliveira¹, José Fittipaldi Neto¹, Sthephanie Marques de Camargo¹, Alessandra Lamas Granero Lucchetti^{2

3}, Daniele Corcioli Mendes Espinha¹, Giancarlo Lucchetti³

Affiliations

¹ Marília Medical School, São Paulo, Brazil.
² University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil.
³ Federal University of Juiz de Fora, Juiz de Fora, Brazil.

PMID: 25521215
DOI: 10.1111/psyg.12087

Abstract

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 (Beck Depression Inventory), anxiety (Beck Anxiety Inventory), quality of life (Short Form Health Survey (SF-36)), religiosity (Duke Religion Index) and caregiver burden (Zarit Caregiver Burden Interview).

Results: A comparison between groups was performed (through χ² 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 Beck Depression Inventory scores), better physical health (SF-36: physical functioning and SF-36: Physical Component Summary), 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: Mental Component Summary) than other caregivers and that caregivers of older adult had a higher caregiver burden (Zarit Caregiver Burden Interview 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.

Keywords: burden; caregiver; mental health; quality of life.