Changes in Health Outcomes among Older Husband Caregivers: A One-Year Longitudinal Study

Abstract

This one-year longitudinal study carried out on a sample of 232 older husband caregivers sought to describe changes in psychological distress and self-perceived health, and to examine relationships between factors drawn primarily from Pearlin's model of caregiving and changes in these two health outcomes. Prediction analyses shows that nearly two thirds of the husbands have unsuccessful outcomes with respect to these two dimensions, that is, most husbands obtain either steadily poor scores at both times of the study or worse scores on one or both outcomes. Higher levels of education and informal instrumental support at time 1, as well as an increase in role overload, are predictive of unsuccessful outcome for psychological distress, whereas an increase in self-efficacy predicts successful outcome for self-perceived health. Overall, husband caregivers vary in their response to caregiving over time. The findings support previous study results showing subjective stressors, rather than objective stressors, and caregiver resources to be significant predictors of caregiving outcomes.