CAREGIVER BURNOUT

Caregiver Burnout and its Effects on Elderly People Depression

Article # 1

Title

Positive Affect and Incidence of Frailty in Elderly Women Caregivers and Non-caregivers.

Introduction

The objective of this study was to determine the positive and negative affects in elderly women, associated with low incident frailty over years. Further this study also narrates the strain barriers hypothesis by appraising about these links and relations which are fluctuated in care givers and non-caregivers. The aim of this report is based on home based interview of women and professional in four US communities between 1999 and 2002. 337 care-giver and 617 non-care-giver participants from the Caregiver-Study of Osteoporosis Fractures (Caregiver-SOF) who were not frail at the baseline Caregiver-SOF interview.

Primary Topic / Research Questions or Hypothesis

To be effective, caregiver assessment should take into account what the caregiver is able and willing to provide. Because the number of elderly people is rapidly growing in every country, it is important to create sufficient home support for elderly people with growing incapacities to maintain their quality of life. If home support is not sufficient, the need for long-term care beds in hospitals or institutions grows. The basic hypothesis included that, elderly women are most likely to;

Play the role of primary caregiver.

They will obtain less help form anyone.

Experience cultural and social pressure to become caregivers

Their distress level and infirmity increases due to Caregivers and Non-caregivers

Summary

The study showed that women suffering from high depressive symptoms have a high rate of frailty in care giver burnout, whereas the low rate of frailty gives out low burnouts, but these rates did not differ when adjusted for race and health status. The results found are consistent with the prior studies which states there are positive effects of women being a caregiver. These women are more tended towards frailty and infirmity as they move towards more of mental distress rather than physical.

Caregivers-SOF and other basic samples of women belong to the same ground were experimented and found that there is less physical health decline in women who are caregiver as they are emotionally strong enough to overcome the factors. Better health status may have masked a differential effect of positive affect in caregivers and non-caregivers.

The study has a strong edge over the examinations preparation as the sample was restricted only to women without frailties baseline, and hence it became easy to evaluate the association between positive and negative effects of being caregiver or non caregiver. The sample from Caregiver-SOF is only of community based women but, all samples were taken from the same population source.

The study can be concluded with the results that high risk was associated with women as non caregiver. It is important to identify the interventions for the relearns of high frailty among women in the projected areas of United States. The implications of the results would improve the care givers quality life also improve their physical health. The active participation in being a care giver, delays the time of development of frailty and decline in health among ...