Health of spouse caregivers of dementia patients: the role of personality and social support.

Extract

---

Health of spouse caregivers of dementia patients: the role of personality and social support.

Providing care to a spouse with dementia is a challenging activity, even under the best of circumstances. Why one spouse caregiver copes effectively whereas another becomes demoralized and unable to cope is not well understood. There is an extensive literature on the stresses of caregiving (George & Gwyther, 1986; Haley, Levine, Brown, & Bartolucci, 1987; Horowitz, 1985; Pruchno & Resch, 1989) and evidence that the strains of caregiving can affect a caregiver's physical and mental health (Kiecolt-Glaser et al., 1987; Kiecolt-Glaser, Dura, Speicher, Trask, & Glaser, 1991; Moritz, Kasl, & Berkman, 1989; Vitaliano, Maiuro, Ochs, & Russo, 1989). Dementia-related caregiving is particularly demanding for spouses because the caregiver's stress arises not only from the heavy and often relentless responsibilities but also may involve bearing witness to and being victimized by the inevitable intellectual and psychological deterioration of one with whom the caregiver has had close and longstanding social and emotional ties.

That individual differences are associated with the effects of caregiving through the subjective appraisal of the stressor is a recent line of inquiry in caregiving research (Hooker, Monahan, Shifren, & Hutchinson, 1992), as is the relationship between individual differences and the appraisal of social support resources (Sarason et al., 1991). In this article, we examine relationships among social support, personality, and health. We explore the extent to which social support, gender, and personality (specifically neuroticism) independently predict caregivers' health. Whether personality plays a role in bolstering social support has important implications for understanding how spouses of dementia patients deal with the daily strains of caregiving and fo...

See the full content of this document

---