Experience of Strain Among Types of Caregivers Responsible for Children With Serious Emotional and Behavioral Disorders

Abstract

Parents and relative caregivers of children with severe emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) often report high levels of strain associated with the care of that child.This study compares how parents and other relative caregivers, and different family caregiver groups, experience strain. Overall, we found that Medicaid caregivers ( n = 648) reported high levels of objective strain, whereas military caregivers ( n = 978) had high scores on the subjective internalized and externalized subscales of the Caregiver Strain Questionnaire (CGSQ). An exploratory common factor analysis showed that overall,the CGSQ performed similarly for the Medicaid and the military caregivers and was generally consistent with previous research showing three factors. However, among Medicaid caregivers, other relatives ( n = 109) reported two rather than one type of objective strain, and emotionally based items had lower correlations with the latent factor among other relatives as compared with parents ( n = 539).These findings suggest the need to tailor approaches to assisting different groups of caregivers in coping with their strain.