No description available.

Purpose: The deinstitutionalization movement formalized the role of the family caregiver in mental health, yet the needs of these family caregivers have received little attention. Additionally, while a wide body of literature has focused on the effects of socio-demographic factors and level of social support on caregiver well-being, less attention has been paid to the nature of the caregiving relationship. This study aimed to address this gap by developing and assessing scales to measure two indicators of the nature of the caregiver-care recipient relationship: intensity of care and life interference, and to use these scales to assess the relationship between these constructs and caregiver physical health. Methods: Using data from a national survey of members of the Schizophrenia Society of Canada, we employed reliability and factor analyses to evaluate whether the multiple items describing the caregiving role from the Caregiver Survey could be combined to form reliable and novel intensity of care and life interference scales. We then employed least squares regression to examine these constructs as predictors of physical health. Results: Factor analysis of the ten items describing intensity of care revealed one strong factor accounting for 44.0% of variance. The Intensity of Care Scale revealed high reliability (Cronbach’s alpha=0.85). Two underlying factors emerged for the life interference items, one accounting for 60.0% of variance and the other for 8.8%. Cronbach’s alpha for the 10-item Daily Life Interference Scale was 0.95. For the 5-item Peace of Mind Interference Scale, Cronbach’s alpha was 0.88. Based on a least squares regression, these scale scores were not significant predictors of physical health. A decline/fluctuation in physical health status as a result of caregiving, lower reported emotional health, and older age predicted lower current physical health ratings and this model accounted for 37.5% of variance. Conclusions: This study contributed three novel and internally consistent scales to the literature to be used and further refined. It also added to the limited body of literature aimed at identifying characteristics of high-risk caregivers and shed light on potential future research directions to ultimately ensure that interventions can be directed towards those at greatest risk of caregiver burnout. / Thesis (Master, Community Health & Epidemiology) -- Queen's University, 2010-09-27 13:29:55.834

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships between adolescent work ethics and caregiver support and employment experiences. For this study, 114 adolescents from a local High School and their caregivers completed questionnaires. The adolescent’s questionnaire contained questions on demographics, caregivers support, perceptions of optimism and pessimism toward employment, and work ethics. The caregiver’s questionnaire included questions on demographics, educational attainment, and employment situation, status and type. Caregiver support and adolescents’ perceived optimism toward employment had a significant relationship with adolescents’ work ethics, where more support was associated with stronger work ethics, affecting a considerable number of the work ethic dimensions. The caregiver employment variables had a lesser impact, where any significant outcomes showed a relationship with only one or two of the adolescents’ work ethic dimensions. Overall, the caregiver group that was identified as primarily mothers had a stronger effect on the adolescents’ work ethics than the other caregiver group of mostly fathers. These findings suggest that caregiver support and the perceived optimism adolescents have toward employment, when evaluating their caregivers’ employment experiences, have a stronger influence on adolescents’ work ethics than the caregiver employment situation, status, or type. The implications of these findings are discussed.

The caregiver family plays an integral role in promoting the overall functioning of the family unit. The six caregiver families in this study were nuclear families in Manitoba who are of hearing status and are raising a child who has special needs in communication. Caregivers shared their parenting experiences as they learned about deafness, took on new roles to meet the needs of their children, and carried out work to bridge the gaps between the deaf child and social systems, such as the school, recreational, and medical systems. The findings from this qualitative study share how caregiver families moved from knowing nothing about deafness to acquiring knowledge and specialized skills on deafness, and deaf-blindness, from their child’s birth to school entry. Several families described their struggles in obtaining resources for their deaf children. Two families relocated to a city so their child could attend a school for the deaf, who teaches academic material using the American Sign Language (ASL). Relocation experiences were described as a grieving process and required multiple adjustments in their life. The families undertook extensive work to establish a shared language in their home so the child could access family life. Once language was established in the home, caregivers further created social linkages between their child and social institutions outside the home. Families also provided recommendations on how hearing people could support the child and his or her family, and offered advice to caregivers and anyone else new to deafness with their perspectives on how others may address typical barriers that they may encounter along the way. This study refers to the Ecological perspective and Empowerment theory and is discussed in the literature review describing the caregiver roles, work and approach to facilitate the integrative linkages between their home, extended family, friends, school, medical professionals, and hearing public.

The caregiver family plays an integral role in promoting the overall functioning of the family unit. The six caregiver families in this study were nuclear families in Manitoba who are of hearing status and are raising a child who has special needs in communication. Caregivers shared their parenting experiences as they learned about deafness, took on new roles to meet the needs of their children, and carried out work to bridge the gaps between the deaf child and social systems, such as the school, recreational, and medical systems. The findings from this qualitative study share how caregiver families moved from knowing nothing about deafness to acquiring knowledge and specialized skills on deafness, and deaf-blindness, from their child’s birth to school entry. Several families described their struggles in obtaining resources for their deaf children. Two families relocated to a city so their child could attend a school for the deaf, who teaches academic material using the American Sign Language (ASL). Relocation experiences were described as a grieving process and required multiple adjustments in their life. The families undertook extensive work to establish a shared language in their home so the child could access family life. Once language was established in the home, caregivers further created social linkages between their child and social institutions outside the home. Families also provided recommendations on how hearing people could support the child and his or her family, and offered advice to caregivers and anyone else new to deafness with their perspectives on how others may address typical barriers that they may encounter along the way. This study refers to the Ecological perspective and Empowerment theory and is discussed in the literature review describing the caregiver roles, work and approach to facilitate the integrative linkages between their home, extended family, friends, school, medical professionals, and hearing public.

The Live-in Caregiver Program is a temporary foreign worker program that allows workers to come to Canada in order to labour as private caregivers for children, the elderly, and disabled individuals. This program allows caregivers to apply for permanent residency after the successful completion of 24 months of full time work. There are a number of scholars, advocacy groups, former caregivers, and other parties that have raised concerns about certain regulations of this program. For example, caregivers under this program have an employer-specific work permit, must live in the homes of the employers, and have no external monitoring of their work environments. Subsequently, the Live-in Caregiver Program has been seen as problematic because of the high number of abusive labour situations. This thesis is dedicated to an analysis of how the Canadian news print media represents the Live-in Caregiver Program. Although there has been much research done on migrant care work within Canada, and around the world, there are few studies on how the news media construct arguments that describe these transnational labour flows. The main topics that guided the research questions for this thesis were: temporary foreign worker programs; citizenship status; globalized, gendered, and racial stereotypes; the live-in regulation; employer specific work permits, and power relations in the labour relationship. This research was not geared to proving or disproving the main findings of key migrant domestic worker literature, rather it was focused on how these conclusions are interpreted, transferred and argued within a publically accessible format, Canadian news print media. This analysis revealed how journalists within Canadian news media construct important cultural narratives to persuade audiences to either reject the LCP as exploitative and problematic, or embrace it as economically beneficial. / Graduate

Caregivers of children with health problems have been demonstrated to show poorer physical and psychological health than caregivers of healthy children. It has been suggested that child behavioural problems are key and account for a large proportion of the variance in caregiver health. Currently, the relation between behaviour problems and caregiver health remains unclear. We conducted a meta-analysis and a secondary data analysis using national data to describe and compare the associations between internalizing and externalizing behaviour problems and caregiver health. Meta-analytical results suggest an association between child behaviour problems and parental stress, depression, and presence of psychiatric symptoms. National data analyses suggested an important association between child behaviour problems, particularly externalizing behaviour problems, and caregiver physical and psychological health when accounting for socioeconomic variables. Results suggest mothers may be more impacted than fathers, and that externalizing behaviour problems may contribute to bigger caregiver health effects than internalizing behaviour problems.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) have demonstrated efficacy in reducing symptoms in survivors of early-stage cancer and have shown promise in adults with advanced cancer and their family caregivers. These interventions may be especially helpful for coping with advanced cancer because acceptance and a greater focus on present-moment experiences are central to the adjustment process. Mindfulness may be a potential mechanism underlying MBI’s health effects, yet suboptimal assessment of mindfulness hinders examination of this hypothesis. Widely used self-report measures of mindfulness require participants to have high self-awareness and comprehend a complex skill and show limited responsiveness to MBIs. Behavioral assessment of mindfulness may address the limitations of self-report measures. The goal of the current study was to obtain preliminary evidence of the validity of a behavioral measure of mindfulness, Levinson and colleagues’ breath counting task, and its responsiveness to MBI among patients and caregivers coping with advanced cancer. Fifty-five patient-caregiver dyads were recruited from a university hospital and community clinics in Indiana. Dyads were randomized to either a 6-week MBI or a usual care control condition. Measures were administered at baseline prior to intervention (week 0), at the end of the 6-week intervention period (week 6), and 1-month post-intervention (week 10). Measures included the breath counting task, self-reported mindfulness, avoidant coping, and distress. Linear mixed modeling was used to determine whether the MEANING intervention led to increased behavioral and self-reported mindfulness compared to the usual care group. Caregivers in the MEANING condition showed improved behavioral mindfulness relative to caregivers in usual care, whereas patients in both the MEANING and usual care conditions showed relatively stable behavioral mindfulness over time. Additionally, there was no evidence that the MEANING intervention impacted behavioral mindfulness to a greater extent than self-reported mindfulness. To further examine the behavioral mindfulness measure’s validity, its relations with self-reported mindfulness, avoidant coping, and distress were examined at all time points. For both patients and caregivers, correlations between behavioral and self-reported mindfulness were small or nearly zero and were not uniformly positive. In the MEANING condition, correlations showed mostly small changes over time, and in the control condition, correlations generally showed little change over time. In addition, for patients and caregivers, most correlations between behavioral mindfulness and distress and avoidant coping were approaching zero or small. Results support the feasibility of the breath counting task in adults with advanced cancer and their caregivers, but provide limited support for its validity. The task warrants further evaluation in populations coping with chronic illness.

No description available.

No description available.