Caregiver Stress and Mental Health: Impact of Caregiving Relationship and Gender

TLDR

The study compared the stress and mental‑health impact of caregiving to spouses, children, siblings, other family members, friends, and others among middle‑aged and older male and female caregivers. Multivariate regression analyses were performed on a 2007 Canadian General Social Survey subsample of caregivers aged 45 and older. Women reported greater stress and poorer mental health when caring for spouses or children compared to parents or others, while men experienced higher stress for the same relationships but without overall mental‑health decline, indicating that spousal and child caregiving is generally more stressful and detrimental, with gender differences evident.

Abstract

This study compared the stress and mental health implications of caregiving to a spouse, children, siblings, other family members, friends, and others among middle-aged and older male and female caregivers. Multivariate regression analyses were conducted using 2007 Canadian General Social Survey data collected on a subsample of caregivers aged 45 and older. Our analyses revealed that for women, caring for a spouse or children was more stressful and detrimental to mental health than caring for parents or others. Similarly, for men, caring for a spouse and for children was more stressful than caring for others but did not adversely affect overall mental health. The findings suggest that spousal and child caregiving tend to be more rather than less stressful and detrimental to middle-aged and older caregivers’ mental health than is caregiving to most others but that gender differences need to be considered.