Chapter 4 - The Organization of Stressors in the Lives of Caregivers

Abstract

This chapter deals with the earliest phases of the caregiving career: the start of care and the active provision of care within the home. The baseline data are used to describe the types of impairment present among dementia patients at the beginning of the study, the demands these impairments as primary stressors impose upon caregivers, and the consequences of the primary stressors on other aspects of life. The measures used to operationalize primary and secondary stressors are presented in the chapter along with their psychometric properties. The patterns of association among primary and secondary stressors are also discussed.. There are two important points to emphasize about the transition into the role acquisition stage. First, there are variations among caregivers in the order of transitional events, and second, there are common patterns of sequences of transitional events that caregivers follow. Care giving is often followed by stressors, these are the conditions, experiences, and activities that are problematic for people, threatening them, thwarting their efforts, fatiguing them, and defeating their dreams. Care giving stress, therefore, arises when the demands imposed by the patient's condition collide with the caregiver's subjective ability to respond to these demands, or when these demands obstruct the pursuit of other objectives. The baseline assessments reported in the chapter, give a snapshot of caregiving across time by portraying the experiences of those who have occupied the role for different periods of time.