Summary: | 碩士 === 輔仁大學 === 臨床心理學系碩士班 === 100 === Purpose: As the population in Taiwan getting ageing, the caring issue is getting more serious such as caring for dementia elderly. Zarit (1986) thought that “no more symptoms like dementia can bring extremely heavy burden to caregivers.” On the other hands, the dementia family caregivers must live under great pressures, and further affect their well-beings. Many researches found that female caregivers tend to use emotion-focused coping strategies more than male (Marcus & Jaeger, 1984 ; Matud, 2004). However, there is still a positive meaning for which caregivers will try to seek a meaning while they are caring, except the negative outcome. Moreover, this is called positive aspects of caregiving. Sleep is an important index of quality of life, and it will change violently after 40 years old (Bahr, 1983; 戴玉慈, 1998). The female demands for sleeping is more than male (Roberts, et al., 1999), and elders’ sleeping problem is more than younger people (Baekeland & Hoy, 1971; Rogestein, 1980). Accordingly, the female dementia family caregivers, especially most of them are older ones, are easily influenced by stress on sleeping quality, and coping style affects it as well(Avi Sadeh, 2004; Sadeh, et al., 2004). However, few researchers explored positive aspect of sleeping quality, so this study will focus on the relationship between sleeping quality and the experience of positive aspects of caregiving by the stress process model inferred by Pearlin et al. in 1990 which Hilgeman et al. modified in 2009.
Method: The survey candidates were refered by the doctors of neurology department in hospitals in nothern Taiwan and needed to fill out a set of questionaire by giving an account of themselves. The questionaire was inclued Revised Ways of Coping Checklist (RWCC), Chinese Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (CPSQI), and Positive Aspects of Caregiveing (PAC). In addition, the survey candidates have to wear the actiwatch for three days and two nights all day long.
Results: The results found that coping style moderated the relation between positive aspects of caregiving in female dementia family caregivers. Further analyses showed that for female dementia family caregivers with high levels of self-blame coping, higher levels of self-affirmation led to an increment of daytime dysfunction. High levels of blame of others coping, higher levels of positive aspects of caregiving or outlook on life led to an increment of subjective sleep duration. High levels of religiosity coping, higher levels of outlook on life led to an increment of objective sleep efficiency, decrement of objective WASO, increment of objective sleep duration. High levels of religiosity coping, higher levels of outlook on life led to an increment of objective sleep efficiency, decrement of objective WASO, increment of objective sleep duration. High levels of religiosity coping, higher levels of self-affirmation led to an increment of subjective sleep duration. High levels of counting one’s blessing coping, higher levels of self-affirmation and positive aspects of caregiving led to an decrement of objective sleep duration.
Conclusions: Our funding show that subjective and objective sleeping quality in female dementia family caregivers are not great. The interaction between positive aspects of caregiving and coping style predicted sleeping quality in female dementia family caregivers. One the intervention in the future, focusing on enhancing the caregiver’s positive aspects of caregiving and coping appropriately will buffer sleeping quality.
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