How does caregiving affect caregivers?

Senior Care in Waterloo IA can also provide great satisfaction and strengthen relationships, thus improving the quality of life of caregivers. Caregivers report higher levels of stress than people who aren't caregivers. It's important for caregivers to know that they too need help and support. A recent survey conducted by the National Opinion Research Center (201) revealed that 83 percent of caregivers considered it a positive experience. Confounding effects, such as the caregiver's level of education and health status, have often not been controlled for in the study design or statistical analysis. However, providing help that meaningfully addresses the patient's needs and desires is likely to be encouraging for the person who cares for them and will contribute to positive health effects.

As a result of these stressors, the caregiver may experience effects such as psychological distress, altered health habits, physiological responses, psychiatric illness, physical illness, and even death. Regence Blue Cross and Blue Shield places both patients and their caregivers at the center of its palliative care program for support the health of both. The health differences associated with caregiving are more pronounced in millennials than in Generation X and baby boomers. Since the provision of care can be harmful to health, it is appropriate to investigate which aspects of the care experience explain these effects.

Therefore, while caregivers report more suffering than non-caregivers, the extent of these differences depends on the populations studied. We identified 6.7 million adults among BCBS members who have a spouse or child who needs the support of a caregiver. Lawton and colleagues' two-factor model (199) suggests that caregivers can experience both emotional distress and psychological satisfaction and growth, effects that are not incompatible. Caregivers first experience distress and depression, followed by physiological changes and altered health habits that ultimately lead to illness and, possibly, death. There is no doubt that it is difficult to demonstrate sequential causal relationships between variables that are considered fundamental in the transition from caregiver stress to illness.

However, it is clear that there are subgroups of caregivers who report high levels of tension, experience increased depression and who may show negative health effects due to the provision of care. Since providing family care became a widely studied topic in the early 1980s, most research has emphasized the burden of providing care and the potential negative effects of caregiving stress on mental and physical health. In an important population-based study on caregiving (Schulz and Beach, 199), which was widely cited, it was reported that the spouse who cared for the spouse who reported stress was at risk of suffering premature mortality.

Margaret Bevacqua
Margaret Bevacqua

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