Coping styles of family dementia caregivers and their relationships to positive affect, depression, and self-rated physical health

This study examined specific coping styles and their relationships to specific caregiver outcomes. Problem-Focused coping, Count Your Blessings, Avoidance, and Wishful Thinking were examined because, though often examined by a variety of measures, these four coping strategies had the most clear relationships to caregiver outcomes in the literature. The outcome measures examined included Positive Affect (PANAS-PA scale), depression (CES-D), and a single-item subjective health rating (SF-36). Because several types of coping, such as avoidance, have surfaced in the caregiving literature as being related caregiver outcomes, as has care recipient behavioral disturbances, this study also explored the possibility of a moderating relationship of behavioral disturbance between coping and caregiver well-being as measured in terms of both depression scores and self-reported physical health.;The sample included 95 Anglo/Caucasian adult females who were currently caregiving for a family member with memory problems in the San Francisco Bay Area. The participants were from the Stress Management Project (SMP; Depp et al., 2005; Gallagher-Thompson et al., 2004).;Positive Affect was hypothesized to be positively related to Problem-Focused coping and Count Your Blessings. In accordance with the literature, Problem-Focused coping and Count Your Blessings were hypothesized to be related to higher levels of depression and better self-rated health. Avoidance and Wishful Thinking were hypothesized to be related to greater depression and poorer self-rated physical health.;The regression analyses showed a relationship between Count Your Blessings and Positive Affect (p = .05). Count Your Blessings was also related to self-rated physical health (p = .023). As widely reported in the literature, this study also found a highly significant relationship between Avoidance coping and caregiver depression (p = .000). No moderating relationship for behavioral disturbances was found, which is likely due to a floor effect relating to the variable of behavioral disturbances.;This study replicates previous findings that caregiver Avoidance and depression are related in caregivers. While no moderating relationship was found for behavioral disturbances, the relationships observed between Count Your Blessings and the outcome measures of Positive Affect and self-rated physical health have wide implications for the promotion of "active cognitive coping strategies."...