Laboratoire Santé Environnement Vieillissement EA2506, Centre de Gérontologie, Université Versailles St-Quentin, Paris, France.
Am J Public Health. 2011 Oct;101(10):1971-9. doi: 10.2105/AJPH.2010.300044. Epub 2011 Apr 14.
We investigated whether, and under what conditions, informal caregiving is associated with improved self-reported physical and mental health, most notably in terms of cognitive functioning.
We performed a cross-sectional analysis of 2008 data from the Gazel Cohort Study, which involved 10 687 men and women aged 54 to 70 years. Multivariate linear and logistic regression models were used to estimate the associations between self-reported health and caregiving status and burden.
Regular caregivers with the highest burden scores reported significantly worse health status than did noncaregivers for almost all of the physical and mental outcomes evaluated after adjustment for potential confounding factors. In particular, they reported more cognitive complaints (odds ratio [OR] = 1.44; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.21, 1.73). Conversely, caregivers with the lowest burden scores reported better perceived health status, less physical and mental tiredness, and fewer depressive symptoms (OR = 0.50; 95% CI = 0.37, 0.68) than did noncaregivers; however, they did not report decreases in cognitive difficulties (OR = 0.98; 95% CI = 0.81, 1.18).
Our findings support the hypothesis that caregiving can have positive effects on health, provided that caregiving activities themselves are not too heavy a burden.
我们旨在探究非正规照护是否以及在何种条件下与改善自我报告的身心健康相关，尤其是在认知功能方面。
我们对 Gazel 队列研究 2008 年的数据进行了横断面分析，该研究共纳入了 10687 名年龄在 54 至 70 岁的男性和女性。采用多元线性和逻辑回归模型来估计自我报告的健康状况和照护状况与负担之间的关联。
在调整了潜在混杂因素后，经常照护且负担得分最高的照护者在几乎所有评估的身心结局方面报告的健康状况明显比非照护者差。特别是，他们报告了更多的认知问题（比值比[OR] = 1.44；95%置信区间[CI] = 1.21，1.73）。相反，负担得分最低的照护者报告的健康状况更好，身体和精神疲劳感更少，抑郁症状也更少（OR = 0.50；95% CI = 0.37，0.68），但他们报告的认知困难并没有减少（OR = 0.98；95% CI = 0.81，1.18）。
我们的研究结果支持这样一种假设，即照护活动本身如果不是过于繁重的负担，那么照护可以对健康产生积极影响。
