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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Coping and depression in Alzheimer's caregivers
— longitudinal evidence of stability | | Author(s) | David V Powers, Dolores Gallagher-Thompson, Helena C Kraemer |
| Journal title | Journals of Gerontology: Series B, Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, vol 57B, no 3, May 2002 |
| Pages | pp P205-P211 |
| Keywords | Dementia ; Family care ; Depression ; Stress ; Longitudinal surveys ; United States of America. |
| Annotation | The present study examined the longitudinal relationship between depressive symptoms and coping strategies in older adult primary caregivers of non-institutionalised Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients. Coping and depression were measured in 51 healthy, non-depressed caregivers (37 women and 14 men) at 4 times of testing approximately 6 months apart. The caregivers' coping strategies and depressive symptoms were found to be largely stable over all times of testing - with a recently developed method for evaluating construct stability - despite significant decline in the patients' cognitive functioning over the same interval. Avoidance coping was also found to be positively associated with depressive symptoms. Results suggest that a strong stable component is present in caregiver coping style and that caregiver intervention researchers may want to examine the extent to which commonly used outcome measures are assessing stable caregiver traits rather than state-dependent distress. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-020617202 A |
| Classmark | EA: P6:SJ: ENR: QNH: 3J: 7T |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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