Psychological Distress and Anxiety among Housewives: The Mediational Role of Perceived Stress, Loneliness, and Housewife Burnout

Abstract

Housewives are experiencing chronic stress when dealing with multiple roles (cooking, shopping, tidying the house) in their daily life. Although earlier studies have documented a significant link between role overload and stress-psychological wellbeing in the workplace, few studies have been conducted among housewives despite their high anxiety and burnout reports. The diathesis-stress model and transactional model of stress indicate that there may be somecontributory factors related to mental health. Within these frameworks, this research aimed to examine housewives' psychological distress and anxiety by focusing on three contributory factors namely housewife burnout, perceived stress, and loneliness. The present study was a novel contribution to the literature investigating the mediating roles of those three contributory factors between psychological distress and anxiety among housewives. Participants were 500 volunteer housewives between the ages of 20 and 70 from Turkey. In addition to Demographic Information Form, The Perceived Stress Scales (PSS-10), The General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12), The UCLA Loneliness Scale-Version 3 (UCLA LS3), The Housewives Burnout Questionnaire (CUBAC), and The Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI) were used. Results showed that there were four paths between psychological distress and anxiety in the model, explaining 31.19% of the total variance in anxiety in housewives. The relationship between psychological distress and anxiety was mediated by perceived distress, loneliness, and housewife burnout. Specifically, the higher psychological distress and higher anxiety relationship were associated with higher perceived distress, higher loneliness, and higher housewife burnout. The findings provide beneficial insight for clinicians to prioritize the abandonment of the cope with loneliness, perceived stress, and burnout while working with housewives having psychological distress and anxiety.

Mental Health States of Housewives: an Evaluation in Terms of Self-perception and Codependency

“…The incidence of mental problems increased as the codependency levels of housewives increased. When current studies are examined, it is seen that housewives experience serious difficulties in mental health terms, regardless of society and culture, and their levels of anxiety, depression, loneliness, burnout, and somatization are at high levels (Durak and Durak, 2022;Garmsari & Safara, 2017;Khizer et al, 2020;Khunttey & Sahu, 2021;Panwar & Srivastava, 2019). These studies in the literature generally examined the economic situation, women's work, domestic violence, or burnout and associated the mental problems of housewives with these.…”

Salivary cortisol, perceived stress and coping strategies: A comparative study of working and nonworking women

“…OR, adjusted odds ratio; CI, confidence interval; OR, odds ratio. (Durak et al, 2022). However, our sample represented women from different cultural backgrounds, and coping mechanisms may be influenced by cultural and religious backgrounds; therefore, further studies are needed that consider ethnicity and religion in examining relationships between stress and coping strategies in women (Alghamdi, 2020a).…”

“…Our findings supported the hypothesis that for working women, juggling multiple life roles, such as being an employee in addition to a family caretaker/housewife/mother may act as a psychological buffer that enhances their mental health, life satisfaction and self‐acceptance. In contrast, nonworking women have responsibility for childrearing, performing household chores, and other familial duties, which bring less life satisfaction and more feelings of worthlessness, and ultimately lead to increased levels of stress and depression (Durak et al, 2022). Among nonworking women, feeling depressed may impact eating patterns, especially given the previously reported link between unemployment, poor lifestyles and poor mental health in nonworking women (Rosenthal et al, 2012).…”

“…The greater stress levels noted among nonworking women in our study highlights the need to consider women's mental health as an important public health concern that warrants further attention by health managers and community leaders. A previous study identified that feeling lonely, lack of a planned schedule, lack of resources, limited leisure time and a feeling of burden with less satisfying jobs led to chronic stress among nonworking women (Durak et al, 2022). All of these causes need to be identified and addressed in public health programmes and policies to build healthier families and ultimately achieve better community outcomes.…”

“…A comparative study showed that working women were better able to cope with stress through adopting healthy practices and could learn how to relax and enjoy life better than nonworking women (Sultanpur, 2019). A recent study that included housewives from Turkey ( N = 500) found that participants experienced chronic levels of stress, burnout and psychological distress because of loneliness, managing familial conflicts, lacking a plan for the day, limited social support and human resources and an overwhelming amount of repeated household chores (Durak et al, 2022). Those authors emphasized the need for focused interventions to assist nonworking women to manage daily life stressors.…”