Wonder Women in Daily Life: What Developed Vietnamese Female Caregivers' Resilience in Dementia Care?

Background and Purpose: Dementia is one of the leading health burdens among older adults in Vietnam. Direct, hands-on care for Vietnamese people with dementia is considered a primary duty of female family members. They face difficulties to take care of multiple family members, including the person with dementia, in addition to contributing to household income. Extant studies explore caregiving burdens of Vietnamese dementia caregivers, yet there is lack of studies on Vietnamese female caregivers’ resilience and resilience-based social work services targeting this group. This paper aims to fill this gap by answering the following questions: (1) What are the manifestations of resilience of Vietnamese female family caregivers to adapt to their dementia care? (2) What factors contribute to develop their resilience in caregiving?

Methods: Applying constructivist grounded theory approach, 21 semi-structured interviews were conducted in Vietnamese language with 13 female family caregivers (aged 44 to 71) who provided primary, hands-on care for people diagnosed with dementia (aged 59 to 84) from a national geriatric hospital in Vietnam. Six of them were interviewed more than one time. The sample was predominantly spouses (eight spouses, four daughters, a daughter-in-law), with a college degree (six with a college degree, seven with lower educational background), and retired (nine retired, four still working). Most of them lived with (n = 11) or nearby (n = 2) the care recipients (CRs), and spent approximately 7.2 hours providing direct care every day. Informed consents were collected before each first interview. All interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim, and analyzed with the program MaxQDA12 using three-phase coding procedure (initial coding, focused coding, and theoretical coding).

Results: Four themes reflecting the manifestations of resilience of female caregivers emerged from the data: (1) accepting the situation, (2) staying in the present, (3) staying positive and realistic, and (4) searching for the meaning of caregiving. The results revealed that amid multiple caregiving burdens, female caregivers accepted the illness of CRs and their caregiving demands. They acknowledged their burdens and psychological hardship, yet chose to focus on the present and strengths of CRs and themselves. Most of them found it rewarding to care for CRs.

Different factors contributing to develop resilience of female caregivers were found. Their love, compassion, and responsibility commitments for CRs motivated them to endure caregiving duty. They upheld strong spiritual beliefs and cultural values of caregiving as filial piety and blessing-sowing actions. Social support, especially from family, and experiences from past adversity also emerged as important contributing factors to their resilience. After going through numerous difficulties, such as war, hunger, loss of loved ones, divorce, etc., they gained their strengths which helped them accept and cope with caregiving burdens easier.

Conclusions and Implications: Results highlight key factors contributing to develop Vietnamese female caregivers’ resilience in dementia care. Social workers can use these results to develop strength-based interventions and support programs for this underserved group. Results also call for future social work research on the adaptation and cultural factors influencing the adaptation of Vietnamese female caregivers to dementia care.