Trait resilience as a moderator between personality dysfunction and caregiving stress in caregivers of children and adults with developmental disabilities

Abstract

Background

Long-term care of a relative with a disability is associated with negative consequences on the caregiver’s mental health. Therefore, investigating how some personality traits, such as resilience, protect caregivers with dysfunctional personality traits from caregiving stress is necessary. This study examines the moderating role of resilience in the relationship between caregiver’s personality dysfunction and care stress.

Methods

A total of 224 family caregivers of children and adults with developmental disabilities participated in this cross-sectional research. They completed self-report measures of resilience, personality dysfunction, and care stress.

Results

The results show that medium and high levels of resilience protect familial caregivers from the adverse effects of personality dysfunction on stress. The relationship is maintained for three of the five dysfunctional personality traits (antagonism, disinhibition, and psychoticism).

Conclusions

From a theoretical point of view, the results show the contribution of the dimensional personality model to the study of caregiving stress. From a practical standpoint, the results can be used to optimise the resilience of familial caregivers, providing them with tools to take better care of their relatives.

Keywords:

• family caregiving
• caregiving stress
• resilience
• personality dysfunction
• developmental disabilities

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Funding

This work was not funded.

Data availability

Data is available in Mendeley Data public repository: http://dx.doi.org/10.17632/hr6mszn32n.1

This study was approved by the Research Ethics Committee of the University of Bucharest.