Mendez-Luck Carolyn A, Kennedy David P, Wallace Steven P
Department of Community Health Sciences, UCLA School of Public Health, Los Angeles, CA, 90095-1772, USA.
J Cross Cult Gerontol. 2008 Sep;23(3):265-82. doi: 10.1007/s10823-008-9058-6. Epub 2008 Mar 7.
This study examined how women in a Mexico City suburb conceptualized the construct of burden within the context of giving care to older relatives. Data were collected on 41 women through semi-structured interviews regarding their caregiving experiences to elderly relatives. Phenomenological principles were used to analyze meanings and understandings of caregiving experiences. Burden was a multi-dimensional construct that referred to specific situations that made caregivers feel emotionally or physical "heavy." Burden also referred to "being a burden" by being in the way, making things difficult, or being a 'weight' on caregivers' shoulders. However, women in this study also viewed burden as a positive sacrifice that involved love, initiative, and good will. This study is an important first step in defining the ways in which caregiving is positively and negatively meaningful for Mexican caregivers and their families. Our findings offer an additional dimension of caregiver burden to broaden our understanding and measurement of the construct. The development of culturally appropriate instruments to measure caregiving burden in Mexico is necessary to provide an empirical foundation for policy recommendations that address the growing need for institutional support of caregivers. Moreover, our findings suggest that researchers studying caregiving in Mexico should think about how burden is measured on existing instruments before adapting them for widespread use.
本研究考察了墨西哥城郊区的女性在照顾老年亲属的背景下如何理解负担这一概念。通过对41名女性进行关于她们照顾老年亲属经历的半结构化访谈收集数据。运用现象学原理分析照顾经历的意义和理解。负担是一个多维概念，指的是使照顾者在情感或身体上感到“沉重”的特定情况。负担也指因碍事、造成困难或成为照顾者肩上的“重担”而“成为负担”。然而，本研究中的女性也将负担视为一种积极的牺牲，其中包含爱、主动性和善意。本研究是界定照顾对墨西哥照顾者及其家庭具有积极和消极意义的方式的重要第一步。我们的研究结果为照顾者负担提供了一个额外维度，以拓宽我们对这一概念的理解和衡量。开发适合墨西哥文化的测量照顾负担的工具，对于为解决对照顾者机构支持日益增长的需求的政策建议提供实证基础是必要的。此外，我们的研究结果表明，在墨西哥研究照顾问题的研究人员在将现有工具改编用于广泛使用之前，应考虑如何在这些工具上测量负担。
