Abstract

With quickly becoming an ageing society in Korea, Researchers investigated how family dementia caregivers' stresses and self-efficacy are related to their stress responses and physical/mental health, and the interaction of caregiving stresses and self-efficacy on caregivers' stress responses and health. The participants were 192 family caregivers (142 females) of demented patients lived in Seoul, whose average of age were 52.35 (SD=12.41). The various psychological tests were used to measure caregivers' stresses, self-efficacy, stress responses, perceived health, physical symptoms, depression, self-esteem, and subjective well-being. Results indicated that caregiving stresses were closely related to stress responses, physical and mental health. Caregivers' self-efficacy were positively related to perceived health and self-esteem. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed moderate effects of self-efficacy on relationships between caregivers' stresses and stress responses or physical/mental health. These results indicated buffering effects of self-efficacy on negative results in stress responses, physical symptoms, and subjective well-being of caregiving stresses with demented patients. For negative results of caregivers' stresses, such as stress responses or physical symptoms, differences by caregivers' stresses were less explicit in group with low self-efficacy, while difference of subjective well-being was only significant in group with high self-efficacy. These results were discussed phenomenologically based on previous studies with focusing on the promotion and intervention of dementia caregivers' health and quality of life. (Korean J Str Res 2009;17:111∼120)

• Keywords: Caregivers, Dementia, Stress, Physical health, Mental health