This research will investigate the mental health problems associated with caregiving to clinically impaired senile dementia patients, and patients without dementia. Both family and patient will be studied. The research will attempt to determine the factors associated with caregiver burden, caregiver psychological wellbeing, and the amount of enriching behavior engaged in by the patient. It is hypothesized that degree of patient impairment, the caregiver's health, perceived mastery, perceived support from others, other role demands, and uplifts will condition both caregiving time and perceived burden. A stress model of these factors will be tested as well as related models predicting patient enriching time. A longitudinal component will determine the changes in the everyday lives of both caregiver and patient occasioned by the institutionalization of the older patient. Groups of families with an impaired older relative in the home will be studied: People with a cognitive impairment and those without a cognitive impairment who are on a waiting list for admission to an institution will be studied. Structured interviews, some standardized scales, time budgets, and ethnographic participant observation will be used to gather the data. A total of 280 people on the waiting lists of 2 homes for the aged will be studied twice so as to be able to contrast changes associated with the institutional admission of half the group with the changes associated with the mere passage of time in the other half.
| Moss, M S; Lawton, M P; Kleban, M H et al. (1993) Time use of caregivers of impaired elders before and after institutionalization. J Gerontol 48:S102-11 |
| Lawton, M P; Kleban, M H; Moss, M et al. (1989) Measuring caregiving appraisal. J Gerontol 44:P61-71 |
