Dementia Caregiving Experiences Among Korean Americans: Qualitative Inquiry Using the Stress Process Perspective

ABSTRACT

Dementia caregiving involves a challenging and complex process, especially for immigrant families. Using a qualitative method, this study provides an in-depth exploration of caregiving experiences among Korean American caregivers of people living with dementia. Based on various sampling strategies, 16 Korean American caregivers of family members/relatives with dementia were recruited in the greater Los Angeles area. Guided by the stress process model and the constant comparative method, themes and subthemes were derived and categorized into four domains: (1) background/context; (2) perception/appraisal; (3) resources/coping, and (4) caregiver burden/reward. Findings suggest that intervention efforts should focus on educating and training dementia caregivers.

KEYWORDS:

• Dementia caregiving
• Korean Americans
• qualitative method
• stress process

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

Data collection was supported by the National Institute on Aging [R21AG071790] and the Southern California Clinical and Translational Science Institute [12-5176-5413]. The work was partially supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea [NRF-2020S1A5C2A03092919] and Florida Department of Health [21A25].