Friday, 14 January 2005 - 10:00 AM

This presentation is part of: Family Caregiving with Older Adults

The Main and Buffering Effects of Psychosocial Resources on Elderly Caregiver Depressive Symptoms

Exploring the effects of psychosocial resources on caregivers has important implications for understanding the overall experiences of caregivers and under what conditions caregiving stress can be alleviated. This study investigates how caregiver psychosocial resources would function as a protective resource for spouse caregivers of frail elders. Specifically, it examines the main and buffering effects of psychosocial resources on caregiver depressive symptoms and explores the relative importance of caregiving stressors and psychosocial resources in predicting depression. In addition, it compares gender differences in the caregiving process. From the sub-sample of the Caregiver Health Effects Study data, 153 spouse caregivers of frail elders were selected to investigate the research questions. A series of hierarchical multiple regressions were run, based on part of the Pearlin et al.'s (1990) caregiving stress process model as a conceptual framework. To test whether psychosocial resources would function as buffers of the effect of caregiving stressors on depression, caregiver depression (CES-D) was hierarchically regressed on contextual background variables, caregiving stressors, psychosocial resources, and interactions of stressors with psychosocial resources. The result showed that contextual background variables accounted for 11% of the explained variance in caregiver depression, primarily due to caregiver poorer health. Primary stressors also explained 11% of the variance, with care recipient problematic behaviors significantly predicting depression. Secondary stressors explained an additional 4% of the variance in depression, with only the financial burden variable significantly contributing to the variance. Caregiver psychosocial resources increased the explained variance for caregiver depression from 26% to 45%, with religiosity and self-mastery also significantly predicting depression. Thus, psychosocial variables played a particularly strong role in predicting caregiver depression. There were some gender differences in the process by which caregiving stressors and psychosocial resources appeared to influence caregiver depression. Financial burden and religiosity were significant predictors of depression only for wives. In particular, self-mastery showed different explanatory efficacy in predicting depression for husbands and wives, having a greater influence on caregiver depression for husbands. Caregiver religiosity was beneficial as both a direct and buffering resource interacting with three types of stressors. General sense of mastery had strong direct association with caregiver depression, and a buffering effect for primary stressors. Formal service use, however, had no significant buffering and direct effects. Sub-analyses indicated that higher levels of religiosity appeared to weaken the association between stressors and depression, but that this effect was less strong for the low and medium groups. Self-mastery showed an unanticipated quadratic pattern at the three levels. The results suggest the need for supportive and educational services to help caregivers draw on their self-mastery and religious resources. The findings also underscore the need for further research to study which specific factors of religiosity are operating as stress-buffers. There is a need to simultaneously use both general and caregiving-specific mastery measures in caregiving research. The contribution of the present study has been to begin to establish an empirical basis for examining the role and effect of psychosocial resources.

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