Stress and Blood Pressure in Dementia Caregivers: The Moderator Role of Mindfulness

ABSTRACT

Objective: Dementia caregiving has been described as a chronically stressful situation with adverse cardiovascular effects. Psychological resources such as mindfulness may reduce the impact of stress on caregivers’ cardiovascular health. The objective of this study was to analyze the moderating effect of trait mindfulness on the relationship between frequency of disruptive behaviors of the care recipient and blood pressure (BP) in dementia caregivers.

Method: Participants were 110 dementia family caregivers. Two hierarchical regressions (for systolic and diastolic BP) were conducted to analyze whether mindfulness moderates the relationship between disruptive behaviors and BP after controlling for known predictors of cardiovascular outcomes.

Results: A significant moderator effect of mindfulness was found between the frequency of disruptive behaviors and diastolic BP (β = −.195, p < .05). Among those caregivers reporting low levels of mindfulness, the relationship between frequency of disruptive behaviors and diastolic BP was relatively stronger than among those reporting high mindfulness levels.

Conclusions: The results suggest that a high level of trait mindfulness may have protective effect on BP when caregivers face high levels of stress.

Clinical Implications: Mindfulness seems to be an important variable with potential for buffering the effects of caregiving stressors on caregivers’ blood pressure.

KEYWORDS:

• Blood pressure
• caregiving
• dementia
• disruptive behaviors
• mindfulness

Acknowledgments

We thank all the caregivers for their participation in the study and also the following centers for collaborating with us in the project: Fundación Cien, Fundación María Wolff, Centro de Salud General Ricardos, Centro de Salud García Noblejas, Centro de Salud Benita de Ávila, Centro de Salud Vicente Muzas, Centro Reina Sofía de Cruz Roja, Centro de Psicología Aplicada de la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, and Servicios Sociales de Getafe. The authors have no conflict of interest to declare.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad; [PSI2012-31239 and PSI2015-65152-C2-1-R] and the Comunidad Autónoma de Madrid, through a pre-doctoral scholarship for the first author of this work.