Burden and self-efficacy in Alzheimer's disease caregivers

Alzheimer's disease (AD), the most common type of dementia occurring in older adults, has reached epidemic proportions. An estimated 5.2 million Americans are living with this chronic, irreversible brain disease (Alzheimer's Association, 2014). Research has shown that providing care for persons with dementia is associated with higher levels of stress than providing care for other chronic medical conditions, often resulting in negative outcomes for the caregiver. Although self-efficacy has been identified as a potential factor in predicting an individual's ability to cope with stress, limited research has examined this concept within the context of AD caregiving and its impact on caregiving outcomes. Based on this significant gap in the caregiving literature, the purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between caregiver self-efficacy and caregiver burden in family caregivers of persons with AD. Utilizing a predictive cross-sectional research design, the predictive potential of the independent variables on the outcome variable, caregiver burden, was also examined. Theoretical underpinnings that formed the overall conceptual framework for this study were drawn from Lazarus and Folkman's (1984) stress and coping framework. This study's sample of caregivers' racial composition was 74.7 percent African American and 25.3 percent Caucasian. Major findings revealed that the caregiver's self-reported health status, duration in years of caregiving, and self-efficacy for controlling upsetting thoughts explained 42 percent of the variation in caregiver burden scores. Overall findings from this investigation support the significance of caregiving self-efficacy and other independent variables impact on caregiving outcomes, namely, caregiver burden. The identification of factors that mediate the negative outcomes of caregiving is critical to the development of targeted strategies aimed at reducing caregiver burden and improving health outcomes of caregivers of persons with AD.

Copyright - Copyright ProQuest, UMI Dissertations Publishing 2014 Last updated - 2015-01-10 First page - n/a

Health care management

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