Care styles and involvement as a psychological protective of the caregiver of people with Parkinson’s disease in Spain

Abstract

Carers of people with Parkinson’s disease (PD) experience stressful situations as a resultof performing their role as caregivers. Thiscan have a negative outcome on their qualityof life. A greater understanding of the relationship between the variables assessed incaregivers can be important in implementingeffective intervention programs. The aim ofthis study was to explore the personality andcoping strategies used by family caregiversof people with PD, analyzing their relationshipwith psychological distress and the carerinvolvement. A cross-sectional study basedon a sample of 106 caregivers of peoplewith Parkinson’s disease tested the hypothesisthat personality and coping strategiescan contribute to identifying differences incarer involvement and psychological distress.Caregiver psychological distress was assessedusing the CORE-OM questionnaire. TheCORE-OM is able to distinguish the populationwithin the clinical and non-clinicalrange. NEO Five-Factor Inventory (NEOFFI)was used to assess personality. Copingstrategies were evaluated with the COPE-28inventory. An operational measure of the carerinvolvement was also used. For this purpose,an adaptation of the Katz index assessingbasic functional capacity was made. Results:First, all cases were clustered according topersonality variables and coping strategies. AK-means cluster analysis was performed andtwo groups were requested. After this, binarylogistic regression analysis was used to testthe research hypothesis. The resulting clustersin the above analysis were selected as predictors.Two analyses were performed. In thefirst, the dependent variable in logistic regressionanalysis was the psychological distress ofthe caregivers (dichotomized variable: clinicaland non-clinical). Results showed that peopleclustered within cluster 1 had a 9.250 timeshigher risk of psychological distress thanthose included in cluster 2 (OR = 9.250; p