Depression as an Overriding Variable Explaining Caregiver Burdens

Abstract

This research examines the relationship between caregiver burdens and caregiver depression. Five measures of burdens were designed to capture the specificity of psychological reactions to caregiving tasks and processes. In addition, an attempt was made to develop strictly behavioral measures of caregiving processes (e.g., caregiver involvement or support from others) to explore the sensitivity of burden measures to "objective" caregiving conditions. Finally, we employed the CES-D as our measure of caregiver depression. Major findings include (a) Caregiving processes affect various dimensions of burdens in largely different ways; but (b) Caregiver depression appears to dominate caregiver perceptions of burdens across all burden dimensions. The results lead us to stress that burdens express evaluations of the caregiving situation in light of more general affective states. This analysis is based on the first wave of a longitudinal study of caregiver-patient dyads in lower Michigan (N = 307).