Patterns of coping among family caregivers of frail older adults.

Abstract

Past studies have extensively examined factors associated with coping strategies that caregivers use to ameliorate distress or solve problems. While these studies have found that stressors and individual resources influence choices of coping strategies, they have tended to overlook caregivers' social resources and have rarely considered the possibility that distinct groups of caregivers may use different sets of coping strategies. We conducted latent-class analyses to identify distinct groups of caregivers: those using no particular patterns of coping (unpatterned-coping), those centering on ameliorating distress (emotional-coping), and those focusing on both ameliorating distress and solving problems (hybrid-coping). Stressors distinguished all three coping groups, individual resources differentiated the hybrid-coping group from the emotional-coping group and the unpatterned-coping group, and social resources separated the emotional-coping group and the hybrid-coping group from the unpatterned-coping group. These findings indicate different factors contributing to caregivers' use of different coping styles and suggest ways to better help caregivers.