Caregiver Burden, Coping strategies and Quality of life of Family Caregivers of Patients with Alzheimers and Dementia

Abstract

The aim of conducting present study was to examine the re lationship between caregiver burden, coping strategies and Quality of life of fami ly caregiver of patients with Alzheimers and Dementia. Moreover, relationships of different demographics variables i.e age, gender, disease, relationship with the patient, marital status, employment status, income and education level were also studied with study variables. Instruments used in the thesis are 'Burden scale for Family Caregivers' (BSFCs) developed by Grassel (2013). ' Quality of life ' (WHOQOL BREF) is developed by WHO (1996) and to measure the coping style, ' Brief COPE' scale was used which is developed by Carver (1997). The sample of study consisted of 60 caregivers of diagnosed patients with Alzheimers and Dementia. Age of participants ranged from 17-57 years. The non-probability purposive sampling technique was used for the selection of the sample which means sample is selected based on some specific characteristics. Here, in this study only the caregivers of diagnosed patients of Alzheimers and Dementia is addressed. The sample was approached from different hospitals (include private and government) of Rawalpindi and Islamabad. The criteria to select the sample was the caregivers of patients with Alzheimers and Dementia. The fi ndings of the study showed that there is a significant inverse re lationship between the two study variables i.e caregiver burden and Quality of life. Furthermore, results reveal ed non-s ignificant age difference on the coping strategies i.e the caregivers falling in the category of late adulthood showed good coping than the early adulthood individuals. Moreover, there is non-significant gender differences on the subscale of quality of life. i.e Social functioning which reveals that quality of life of male caregivers is better than that of female caregivers. The caregivers living with the patients showed greater non-significant results of caregiver burden, poor quality of life and poor coping strategies than the caregivers who does not live with the patients. The current study will provide the relationship among the study variables that what extent of caregiving would start effecting the quality of life of the caregiver. Results of the study have important implications for the caregivers to improve coping strategies which would lessen their burden.