Graduate Thesis Or Dissertation

 

Personality traits and mental health of spouse caregivers in two disease groups : Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease 公开 Deposited

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https://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/concern/graduate_thesis_or_dissertations/70795971w

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  • A consistent research question in caregiving is why caregivers show individual differences in their abilities to manage stress. This study focuses on the personality traits of spouse caregivers to assess individual differences which enable them to adapt to their particular caregiving situation. Previous research has established concurrent relationships between personality traits of neuroticism and optimism to the mental and physical health of the spouse caregivers. What has not been shown to date is whether the personality traits of caregivers predict their health outcomes. Therefore, the purpose of the current study is to examine a predictive relationship between personality traits (neuroticism and extraversion) of spouse caregivers at baseline and their psychological mal-being (opposite of well-being) approximately one year later, hypothesized to be mediated by social support from family and friends. In particular, higher scores on neuroticism are expected to predict worse mental health and higher scores on extraversion, better mental health. This study also proposes to determine whether there are differences in such a relationship, based on gender, or whether caregivers are caring for a spouse with a cognitive or physical impairment. A sample of 122 spouse caregivers of people with Alzheimer' s disease (n = 64) and Parkinson's disease (n = 58) participated in this longitudinal study. Structural equation modeling was used to examine the predicted relationships. The results of this study show that neuroticism and extraversion (as measured by the NEO-FFI) at Time 1 predict social support (SSA scale) and perceived stress (PSS) at Time 2, and all of these variables are related to depression (CES-D) and negative affect (Bradbum scale) at Time 2. Particularly, spouse caregivers who have higher scores on neuroticism experience lower social support, higher perceived stress, and worse psychological health. Furthermore, spouse caregivers high in extraversion experienced higher social support. Moreover, Alzheimer' s disease spouse caregivers felt more depressed and more anxious than Parkinson's disease spouse caregivers. The findings of the current study suggest that interventions could be targeted individually to caregivers based on knowledge of trait characteristics to sustain their caregiving role and to improve their psychological well-being.
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