School of Social Work, MacEwan University, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
Gerontology Research Centre, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
Gerontology. 2023;69(3):289-300. doi: 10.1159/000526251. Epub 2022 Sep 27.
The Healthy Caregiver Hypothesis (HCH) suggests that caregiving is associated with beneficial health impacts for family caregivers. However, mixed results have been reported, particularly when different levels of caregiving intensity were examined. This study analyzes the relationship between caregiving intensity and three health indicators (functional health, chronic illness, and self-rated general health) among Canadian older adults over 3 years.
We drew upon a subsample of 11,344 participants aged 65 years and older from the Baseline and Follow-up 1 data of the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging and used linear mixed models to test the hypothesis based on different levels of caregiving intensity.
Older adults who provided low-intensity care recently or continuously reported better functional health and self-rated health than noncaregivers. In contrast, older adults with low-intensity caregiving responsibility reported more chronic conditions over time compared to noncaregivers, but this association was not found for high-intensity caregivers.
DISCUSSION/CONCLUSION: This study elucidates the HCH by incorporating caregiving intensity to understand patterns of better functional health and perceived health but more chronic conditions. The findings yielded from different health indicators suggest the impact of caregiving on health may be domain specific.
健康照料者假说（HCH）认为，照料者与照料者的健康有益影响有关。然而，报告的结果参差不齐，特别是当检查不同程度的照料强度时。本研究分析了加拿大老年人在 3 年期间，照料强度与三种健康指标（功能健康、慢性疾病和自我评估总体健康）之间的关系。
我们从加拿大老龄化纵向研究的基线和随访 1 数据中抽取了 11344 名年龄在 65 岁及以上的样本，使用线性混合模型，根据不同的照料强度水平检验假设。
最近或持续提供低强度护理的老年人报告的功能健康和自我评估健康状况优于非照料者。相比之下，随着时间的推移，有低强度照料责任的老年人比非照料者报告了更多的慢性疾病，但高强度照料者没有发现这种关联。
讨论/结论：本研究通过纳入照料强度来阐明 HCH，以了解功能健康和感知健康更好但慢性疾病更多的模式。来自不同健康指标的研究结果表明，照料对健康的影响可能是特定于领域的。
