Sociocultural factors, guilt and depression in family caregivers of people with dementia. Kinship differences

Abstract

Objectives

This study aims to analyze the role that family obligations and social desirability have for understanding guilt and depressive symptoms in family caregivers. A theoretical model is proposed to analyze this significance based on the kinship with the person cared for.

Methods

Participants are 284 family caregivers of people with dementia divided into four kinship groups (husbands, wives, daughters and sons). Face-to-face interviews were conducted assessing sociodemographic variables, familism (family obligations), dysfunctional thoughts, social desirability, frequency and discomfort associated with problematic behaviors, guilt and depressive symptoms. Path analyses are performed to analyze the fit of the proposed model and multigroup analysis to study potential differences between kinship groups.

Results

The proposed model fits the data well and explains significant percentages of variance of guilt feelings and depressive symptomatology for each group. The multigroup analysis suggests that, for daughters, higher family obligations were associated with depressive symptomatology through a report of higher dysfunctional thoughts. For daughters and wives, an indirect association between social desirability and guilt was observed through reaction to problematic behaviors.

Conclusion

The results support the need to consider the significance of sociocultural aspects such as family obligations and the desirability bias in the design and implementation of interventions for caregivers, especially for daughters. Considering that the variables that contribute to explaining caregivers’ distress vary depending on the relationship with the person cared for, individualized interventions may be warranted depending on the kinship group.

Keywords:

• Kinship
• dementia
• familism
• social desirability
• guilt
• depression

Acknowledgements

We want to thank all the caregivers who took part in the study, and the following centers for collaborating in the project: Ayuntamiento de Madrid (Dirección General de Mayores), Aulas Kalevi, Asociacion de Familiares de Enfermos de Alzheimer Madrid Suroeste (AFAMSO). Data collection was not preregistered. The study materials, analytic methods, and data are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The present project was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness under Grant PSI2015-6152-C2-1-R, PID2019-106714RB-C21 and PID2019-106714RB-C22. Cristina Huertas Domingo was supported by a Pre-Doctoral FPI from the Spanish Ministry of Education and Culture.