Abstract
BackgroundDespite the generally accepted belief that social support improves caregiver adjustment in general and subjective burden in particular, the literature shows mixed findings, and a recent review concluded that the predictive strength of caregiver social support in determining caregiver burden is less evident, due to the conceptual diversity of this determinant.ObjectiveThe purpose of this review is to analyse the relationship of perceived and received social support with subjective burden among informal caregivers of an adult or older adult.MethodsA systematic search was carried out up to September 2017 in the following databases: MEDLINE (PubMed), CINAHL, EMBASE, PsycINFO), Scopus and ISI Proceedings, and a meta-analysis was performed with the results of the selected and included studies.ResultsFifty-six studies were included in the meta-analysis, which provided 46 independent comparisons for perceived support and 16 for received support. Most of these studies were cross-sectional. There was a moderate, negative association of perceived social support on subjective burden (r = -0.36; CI 95% = -0.40, -0.32) and a very small, negative association of received support on subjective burden (r = -0.05; CI 95% = -0.095, -0.001).Conclusions1) perceived and received support are not redundant constructs, 2) the relationships between social support and subjective burden depend on whether the social support is measured as perceived or received, 3) the relationship of perceived social support with subjective burden has a bigger effect size than that of received social support, the relation between received support and subjective burden being clinically irrelevant, 4) perceived social support may be a good predictor of subjective burden.Implications of key findingsOur findings broadly support interventions promoting social support in caregivers to prevent or alleviate subjective burden, and specifically, to intervene on the promotion of perceived social support more than on the promotion of received social support when preventing or alleviating burden.
Highlights
Social support can be defined as “the existence or availability of people on whom we can rely, people who let us know that they care about, value and love us” [1]
We consider the result of the meta-analysis as precise because of the width of the confidence intervals, the numbers of studies included and the median sample size
Subjective burden has been negatively related to perceived social support and received social support, in caregivers of an adult or older adult care-recipient
Summary
Despite the generally accepted belief that social support improves caregiver adjustment in general and subjective burden in particular, the literature shows mixed findings, and a recent review concluded that the predictive strength of caregiver social support in determining caregiver burden is less evident, due to the conceptual diversity of this determinant. Editor: Yinglin Xia, University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine, UNITED STATES
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