CAREGIVER MENTAL HEALTH IMPAIRMENT--IMPACT ON ELDER CARE

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DESCRIPTION (Adapted from applicant's abstract): A 3-site longitudinal study is proposed in which the impact of caregiver mental health on the quality of care providers to elderly family members will be examined. Existing research indicated that substantial percentages of caregivers are emotionally distressed by the caregiving experience in terms of depressive symptomatology, Categories of data to be collected include predisposing factors (e.g., care recipient impairment, caregiver physical health and personal resources, exogenous life events), caregiver mental health status (depression, anger, anxiety, and cogntive impairment), and quality of care outcomes (operationalized as physical and psychological abuse and neglect and/or financial exploitation). The applicants hypothesize that caregiver mental health factors will mediate associations between predisposing factors and quality of care. It is also predicted that caregiver cognitive impairment will have both direct and moderating effects (through espects of caregiver mental health) on quality of care. Multisample analysis of covariance structures will assess measurement equivalency between caregivers and care recipients. Structural equations modeling (SEM) will be employed: a) at each measurement point for testing, refinement, and cross-validation of the proposed model, and b) to assess predictive relationships between the model's components. SEM-based Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM) and latent growth modeling will be used to assess changes in those relationships over time.