IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aph/ajpbhl/10.2105-ajph.2010.300044_4.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Informal caregiving and self-reported mental and physical health: Results from the gazel cohort study

Author

Listed:
  • Buyck, J.-F.
  • Bonnaud, S.
  • Boumendil, A.
  • Andrieu, S.
  • Bonenfant, S.
  • Goldberg, M.
  • Zins, M.
  • Ankri, J.

Abstract

We investigated whether, and under what conditions, informal caregiving is associated with improved self-reported physical and mental health, most notably in terms of cognitive functioning. Methods. We performed a cross-sectional analysis of 2008 data from the Gazel Cohort Study, which involved 10687 men and women aged 54 to 70 years. Multivariate linear and logistic regression models were used to estimate the associations between self-reported health and caregiving status and burden. Results. Regular caregivers with the highest burden scores reported significantly worse health status than did noncaregivers for almost all of the physical and mental outcomes evaluated after adjustment for potential confounding factors. In particular, they reported more cognitive complaints (odds ratio [OR]=1.44; 95% confidence interval [CI]=1.21, 1.73). Conversely, caregivers with the lowest burden scores reported better perceived health status, less physical and mental tiredness, and fewer depressive symptoms (OR=0.50; 95% CI=0.37, 0.68) than did noncaregivers; however, they did not report decreases in cognitive difficulties (OR=0.98; 95% CI=0.81, 1.18). Conclusions. Our findings support the hypothesis that caregiving can have positive effects on health, provided that caregiving activities themselves are not too heavy a burden.

Suggested Citation

  • Buyck, J.-F. & Bonnaud, S. & Boumendil, A. & Andrieu, S. & Bonenfant, S. & Goldberg, M. & Zins, M. & Ankri, J., 2011. "Informal caregiving and self-reported mental and physical health: Results from the gazel cohort study," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 101(10), pages 1971-1979.
    • Handle: RePEc:aph:ajpbhl:10.2105/ajph.2010.300044_4
    DOI: 10.2105/AJPH.2010.300044
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.2105/AJPH.2010.300044
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.2105/AJPH.2010.300044?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Raymond Hernandez & Elizabeth A. Pyatak & Cheryl L. P. Vigen & Haomiao Jin & Stefan Schneider & Donna Spruijt-Metz & Shawn C. Roll, 2021. "Understanding Worker Well-Being Relative to High-Workload and Recovery Activities across a Whole Day: Pilot Testing an Ecological Momentary Assessment Technique," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(19), pages 1-17, October.
    2. Costa-Font, Joan & Vilaplana-Prieto, Cristina, 2022. "Mental health effects of caregivers respite: Subsidies or Supports?," The Journal of the Economics of Ageing, Elsevier, vol. 23(C).
    3. Ricardo Rodrigues & Cassandra Simmons & Andrea E. Schmidt & Nadia Steiber, 2021. "Care in times of COVID-19: the impact of the pandemic on informal caregiving in Austria," European Journal of Ageing, Springer, vol. 18(2), pages 195-205, June.
    4. Patrick Janson & Kristina Willeke & Lisa Zaibert & Andrea Budnick & Anne Berghöfer & Sarah Kittel-Schneider & Peter U. Heuschmann & Andreas Zapf & Manfred Wildner & Carolin Stupp & Thomas Keil, 2022. "Mortality, Morbidity and Health-Related Outcomes in Informal Caregivers Compared to Non-Caregivers: A Systematic Review," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(10), pages 1-25, May.
    5. Guogui Huang & Fei Guo & Gong Chen, 2022. "The Role and Wellbeing of Female Family Caregivers in the Provision of Aged Care in China," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 159(2), pages 707-731, January.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aph:ajpbhl:10.2105/ajph.2010.300044_4. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Christopher F Baum (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.apha.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.