Department of Sociology and Social Work, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China.
Department of Sociology/Department of Public Health, Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan, USA.
J Gerontol Soc Work. 2022 Oct;65(7):692-710. doi: 10.1080/01634372.2021.2019164. Epub 2022 Jan 5.
Caregiving burden proves to be a risk factor of anxiety disorders and anxiety affection. The current study investigates how an endogenous personality dimension - neuroticism - moderates the association between caregiving burden and anxiety affection. Between 2015 and 2017, the study deployed a cross-sectional survey of 674 (response rate = 89%) older adults who were hospitalized for dementia at two hospitals. From all primary caregivers of these patients, 661 agreed to participate in the survey which yielded 661 matched dyads as the final sample. Caregiving burden, neuroticism, and anxiety affection were each measured by established assessment instruments. We employed multivariate OLS regression to test the moderator and regressor effects. We found that care burden is a significant risk factor of higher levels of anxiety affection (β = .17, < .001), and accounts for 4.6% of the variance in anxiety. Neurotic personality is also significantly associated with a greater level of anxiety (β = .26, < .001). Neurotic personality moderates the association between anxiety and care burden (β = .24, < .001). Our findings suggest that social and healthcare workers should assess caregiver personality and burden as well as provide support, resources, and coping strategies to those with neurotic personality traits or high care burden in an effort to reduce anxiety among caregivers.
照料负担被证明是焦虑障碍和焦虑情绪的一个风险因素。本研究调查了内源性人格维度——神经质——如何调节照料负担与焦虑情绪之间的关系。在 2015 年至 2017 年期间，该研究对在两家医院因痴呆住院的 674 名（应答率=89%）老年人进行了横断面调查。在这些患者的所有主要照顾者中，有 661 人同意参与调查，最终样本为 661 对匹配的护理者。通过已建立的评估工具测量了照料负担、神经质和焦虑情绪。我们采用多元 OLS 回归来检验调节变量和回归变量的影响。我们发现，照料负担是焦虑情绪水平升高的一个重要风险因素（β=.17，<0.001），并解释了焦虑情绪方差的 4.6%。神经质人格也与更高水平的焦虑显著相关（β=.26，<0.001）。神经质人格调节了焦虑与照料负担之间的关系（β=.24，<0.001）。我们的研究结果表明，社会和医疗保健工作者应该评估照顾者的人格和负担，并为具有神经质人格特质或高照料负担的人提供支持、资源和应对策略，以减轻照顾者的焦虑。
