Survival of Persons With Alzheimer's Disease: Caregiver Coping Matters

Abstract

Because this study is the first to report the link between caregiver coping and care-recipient survival, further study to understand the dynamics is required. We discuss several possible mechanisms, including the possibility that caregivers engaging in wishfulness-intrapsychic coping are less psychologically available to the person with dementia. These caregivers may therefore provide less person-centered care that is responsive to the true capacities of the person with dementia, and thus they may inadvertently contribute to excess disability and consequent accelerated decline. Because wishfulness-intrapsychic coping was uncorrelated with instrumental or acceptance coping, our findings suggest that interventions to enhance coping skills among caregivers, which have focused primarily on increasing problem solving and acceptance coping, also may have to include specific attempts to reduce wishfulness-intrapsychic approaches to benefit not only the caregiver but the care recipient as well.