| Summary: | 碩士 === 輔仁大學 === 臨床心理學系碩士班 === 103 === Purpose: As Taiwan gradually become an aging society, the issue of the aged is getting more and more attention. The increasing dementia population is accompanied by aging population. Dementia is one of the causes of disability and dependency among older people; therefore it impacts not only patients but also their family caregivers, and brings stress and burden to caregivers. The results of previous studies all indicated that caregiving work impact family caregivers' physical and mental health. In recent years, more researchers focus on the positive factors of dementia caregiving, and remind that we should not ignore the positive and negative aspects of caregiving work. In the present study, we explore the relationships among self-efficacy, proactive coping, positive aspects of caregiving and well-being in a population of Taiwan female dementia family caregivers by the conceptual model of Alzheimer’s caregivers' stress proposed by Pearlin and colleagues (1990).
Method: The 81 participants in this study were referred by the doctors of neurology department and psychiatry department in hospitals in northern Taiwan. All participants needed to fill out a set of questionnaire, including demographic data, Positive Aspects of Caregiving (PAC), Revised Scale for Caregiving Self-Efficacy (SE), The Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D), Caregiver Well- Being Scale, and Proactive Coping Scale (PCS).
Results: The results showed that the influence of caregiving self-efficacy on well-being and depression is mediated through positive aspects of caregiving; in other words, positive aspects of caregiving is a critical variable for female dementia family caregivers' positive and negative mental health. Different dimensions of caregiving self-efficacy separately reflect particular psychological construct, and affect mental health in different ways.
Conclusions: In the traditional stress process model, the predictor or antecedent variable is usually the caregiving stressor. In the present study, we adopt resource to be our predictor, and explore the caregiving model of positive process. We expect that the intervention in the future can improve caregivers' mental health (ex: well-being and depression) through positive factors, such as promoting caregiving self-efficacy, perception of positive aspects of caregiving, and using of proactive coping.
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