Coping and Burden Among Caregivers of Patients with Cognitive Impairment, Yunnan Province, the People's Republic of China
Keywords:
Cognitive impairment, Caregivers, Coping strategy, Caregiver burdenAbstract
Caregivers of patients with cognitive impairment often employ various coping strategies to navigate the challenges associated with caregiving. These coping strategies can have both positive and negative adaptive outcomes, significantly impacting the overall burden of caregiving. This descriptive correlational study aimed to investigate the coping strategies utilized by family caregivers of patients with cognitive impairment and explore the relationship between coping and burden among caregivers. The participants were 172 caregivers from the two tertiary hospitals in Kunming City. Data were collected using a demographic data record form for both caregivers and patients, along with the Brief COPE-Chinese version and the Zarit Burden Interview Chinese version. The content validity indexes of the Brief COPE and the Zarit Burden Interview were 0.97 and 0.97, respectively, and the reliabilities were 0.84 and 0.92, respectively. Descriptive statistics and Spearman’s rank-order correlation were employed for data analysis.
The results were presented as follows:
1. The frequently used coping strategies among caregivers of patients with cognitive impairment were dysfunctional coping, emotion-focused coping, and problem-focused coping. The mean scores ± SD were as follows: 29.27 ± 5.77, 25.11 ± 5.27, and 15.44 ± 2.94, respectively.
2. The overall mean burden score among caregivers was 45.06 (SD = 14.88). The mean scores ± SD for different dimensions of burden were as follows: Role strain, Personal strain, Incompetency, Dependency, and Guilt: 14.35 ± 4.99, 14.05 ± 4.89, 8.29 ± 3.08, 4.09 ± 1.86, 4.31 ± 1.67, respectively.
3. There was a weak positive correlation between coping strategies and caregiver burden. Specifically, Emotion-focused coping had a weak relationship with guilt (rs = .212, p < .01), Role strain (rs = .165, p < .01) and Incompetency (rs = .176, p < .01); Problem-focused coping had a weak relationship with incompetency (rs = .228, p < .01), dependency (rs = .223, p < .01), and guilt (rs = .216, p < .01); and Dysfunctional coping had a weak relationship with dependency (rs = .178, p < .01), guilt (rs = .159, p < .01) and Incompetency (rs = .150, p < .01).
The findings offer insights into the coping mechanisms used by caregivers and their associations with caregiver burden. Future research should be carefully categorised based on the characteristics of caregivers, and should focus on examining the predictive factors of burden among caregivers of patients with cognitive impairment.
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