Caregiver Anxiety over Time: The Influence of Race and Gender

Background and Significance: Many caregivers of older adults feel anxiety; however, caregiver anxiety has often been studied in the caregiving literature as correlated with depression and not an issue unto itself. Previous studies have shown that anxiety has been positively linked to a greater need for assistance with activities of daily living, care recipient behavior problems, feelings of caregiver burden,the quality of care provided to the care recipient and premature placement.

Methods: This study is a longitudinal, secondary data analysis of the Family Relations in Late Life (FRILL) 2 study.  Using the Pearlin stress process model (SPM) as a guide, the purpose of this study was to examine caregiver anxiety among 444 participants over 36 months among African American and White caregivers of older adults living in the community. A two-level Hierarchical Linear Model (HLM) was used to predict changes over time for caregiver anxiety and examined the influence of race, gender and constructs suggested by the Pearlin SPM.

Results: Caregivers with greater less education, less social support and greater activity restriction, reported higher levels of anxiety. There was no significant main effect of time suggesting that anxiety levels remained relatively stable over time.  There was no significant main effect for race suggesting that there are no significant differences between African American and White caregivers in their report of anxiety over time. However, there was a main effect for sex such that female caregivers reported significantly higher anxiety than males.

Conclusions and Implications: Caregivers for older adults may be facing a multitude of issues. Although caregivers are often screened for depression, anxiety may be playing an important role in the stress and burden felt by caregivers for older adults. In particular women may be experiencing a significant level of anxiety that could be due to many factors, including financial worries. These caregivers could benefit from services targeted to meet their specific needs. Research has demonstrated that a one-size-fits-all approach is often not effective with relieving caregiver stress and burden. The Pearlin model is particularly suited to assist social workers and other helping professionals because it considers specific concepts and assessment tools and interventions have been developed to accompany the model.