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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Social support and adjustment to caring for elder family members
— a multi-study analysis | | Author(s) | Virginia L Smerglia, Nancy B Miller, Diane L Sotnak |
| Journal title | Aging & Mental Health, vol 11, no 2, March 2007 |
| Pages | pp 205-217 |
| Source | http://www.tandfonline.com |
| Keywords | Family care ; Informal care ; Adjustment ; Literature reviews. |
| Annotation | This multi-study analysis systematically examines research findings on relationships between social support and caregiver adjustment, to discover whether informal support helps family caregivers. Caring for older relatives is an ongoing stressful life course event and role. Informal social support is often used as a predictor of caregiver adjustment outcomes; and while it is widely believed to enhance adjustment, the varied research results do not necessarily support this belief. A computer-generated literature search of social sciences and medical databases produced 35 caregiving articles published in refereed journals, which met study parameters. A coding form was developed to categorise social support and adjustment variables for cross-tabular analysis. The findings show most relationships (61%) between social support and caregiver adjustment are not positively significant. Of the minority of positively significant relationships, neither perceived (available) nor received support is more important, and neither instrumental nor socio-emotional support is more likely to aid adjustment. Researchers and health care professionals need to explore the negative impact of social support and attributes of caregiver care recipient relationships. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-070514218 A |
| Classmark | P6:SJ: P6: DR: 64A |
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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