Disrupted activities and caregivers resilience: longitudinal patterns and associations

Abstract PurposeRelatives are often caregiving for patients with advanced cancer and carry a heavy burden. Self-care and resilience-building activities offer building blocks to enhance their wellbeing and burden-bearing capacity. This study assessed the longitudinal patterns of disrupted activities of caregivers and their association with resilience reported by caregivers. MethodsData came from the National Study of Caregiving, a nationally representative study of caregivers. We analyze outcomes for caregivers for three waves of NHAT (2011-2017), estimating associations of disrupted activities and positive appraisals on 1) caregiving burden 2) resilience. Caregivers reported positive appraisals and the number of activities that have been interrupted due to their caregiving responsibilities. ResultsMultilevel models with heterogeneous within-person variance were fit to test the hypotheses on associations between disrupted activities, positive appraisals, and fluctuations in resilience and caregiving burden. Our analysis confirmed increasing disrupted activities among caregivers over time. When interrupted activities were higher than average, caregivers reported lower levels of resilience and higher levels of caregiving burden, suggesting that disrupted activities can contribute to caregivers. The reverse pattern was found for positive appraisals. ConclusionMore positive appraisals and lower levels of disrupted activities were associated with lower caregiver burden and higher levels of caregiver resilience. This study points to the critical value that caregiver self-care and positive appraisals are essential to bolster caregiver resilience and counteract caregiver burden. Future studies should illuminate the causal relation. This study will broaden our understanding of caregivers' self-care needs and provide practical implications for supporting caregivers.