Health-related quality of life in Spanish informal caregivers: gender differences and support received

Abstract

Male and female caregivers in Spain differ in received support and how their HRQoL is affected. These differences are important to design interventions to promote more equitable sharing of care responsibilities and better caregiver health.

Psychological Symptomatology in Informal Caregivers of Persons with Dementia: Influences on Health-Related Quality of Life

“…Other findings reported in the present study are consistent with previous research; we also found that caregivers had a poorer HRQoL than non-caregivers [10][11][12]22,32,33] and experience more pain/discomfort and anger/hostility [37]. This may be due to their daily caring tasks, the functional disabilities of the patients, and the duties involved in patient supervision [38].…”

“…According to recent research, symptoms such as hostility, obsessive-compulsive, and paranoid ideation, among others, have been somewhat documented in studies of spousal caregivers [34][35][36], but this psychological symptomatology is less reported in other populations who do not have the responsibility of looking after their relatives every day. For this reason, our study also compared these psychological symptoms between caregivers and non-caregivers, finding that caregivers reported higher levels of general distress than matched controls [32]. This symptomatology could be derived from patient behaviour problems, social desirability, or the need to provide increasing levels of daily living assistance [20,34].…”

“…Previous studies also noted that several factors such as worries about the future and the progression of illness, quality of life of patients, age, andsubjective burden have been associated with a decreasing HRQoL in caregivers [13,33]. Nevertheless, there might be other factors that have been less investigated to date that may help to better explain the relationship between psychological symptoms and HRQoL for these informal caregivers [32]. According to recent research, symptoms such as hostility, obsessive-compulsive, and paranoid ideation, among others, have been somewhat documented in studies of spousal caregivers [34][35][36], but this psychological symptomatology is less reported in other populations who do not have the responsibility of looking after their relatives every day.…”

“…In this regard, several factors have been considered as mediators of this relationship, including gender, time spent caring, stage of disease, neuropsychiatric symptoms, functional dependency and cognitive impairment of the patient, older age, level of education, socioeconomical status, and social support, among others [30,31]. However, all these factors are further modulated by individual differences among caregivers [32], which are less modifiable. Previous studies also noted that several factors such as worries about the future and the progression of illness, quality of life of patients, age, andsubjective burden have been associated with a decreasing HRQoL in caregivers [13,33].…”

“…This may be due to their daily caring tasks, the functional disabilities of the patients, and the duties involved in patient supervision [38]. In addition, the EQ-5D-3L has been proven to be a feasible tool for measuring HRQoL in specific populations groups [39]; however, it has been less used to analyse the relationship between HRQoL and other caregiver factors such as psychological symptoms [32].…”