Informal Caregiver Social Network Types and Mental Health: The Mediating Role of Psychological Resilience

ABSTRACT

Little is known about whether and why social networks protect mental health among informal caregivers. This study examined the association between informal caregiver social network types and depressive symptoms and the mediatory mechanism of psychological resilience. Latent class analysis, applied to cross-sectional data on 278 Singaporean caregivers, identified four social network types: restricted (42%), friend (16%), family (21%), and diverse (21%). Path analysis showed that the diverse social network type, compared to the restricted social network type, was associated with a lower level of depressive symptoms, and psychological resilience fully mediated this association. Interventions should help caregivers to maintain social networks with their family and friends.

KEY POINT

• Informal caregiver social network typologies were explored using data from Singapore.

• Diverse, friend, family, and restricted social network types were identified.

• Diverse social network type was negatively associated with depressive symptoms.

• Psychological resilience fully mediated the association.

KEYWORDS:

• Caregiving
• depression
• psychological resilience
• Singapore
• social network typology

Disclosure statement

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

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/08959420.2024.2319535

Additional information

Funding

This research is supported by the Singapore Ministry of Health’s National Medical Research Council under its Health Services Research - Competitive Research Grant (NMRC/HSRG/0095/2018). This work is also supported by the Duke-NUS Signature Research Programme funded by the Ministry of Health, Singapore. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Ministry of Health.