Family Caregiving during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Canada: A Mediation Analysis

Sharon Anderson, Jasneet Parmar, Tanya L’Heureux, Bonnie Dobbs, Lesley Charles and Peter George J. Tian
Additional contact information
Sharon Anderson: Division of Care of the Elderly, Department of Family Medicine, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB T5G 2T4, Canada
Jasneet Parmar: Division of Care of the Elderly, Department of Family Medicine, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB T5G 2T4, Canada
Tanya L’Heureux: Division of Care of the Elderly, Department of Family Medicine, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB T5G 2T4, Canada
Bonnie Dobbs: Division of Care of the Elderly, Department of Family Medicine, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB T5G 2T4, Canada
Lesley Charles: Division of Care of the Elderly, Department of Family Medicine, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB T5G 2T4, Canada
Peter George J. Tian: Division of Care of the Elderly, Department of Family Medicine, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB T5G 2T4, Canada

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 14, 1-15

Abstract: Family caregiving is a public health issue because of caregivers’ significant contribution to the health and social care systems, as well as the substantial impact that giving and receiving care has on the health and quality of life of care receivers and caregivers. While there have been many studies that associate caregivers’ care work, financial difficulty, navigation, and other caregiving factors with family caregivers’ psychological distress, we were interested not only in the factors related to family caregiver anxiety but also in hypothesizing how those effects occur. In this study, we used Andrew Hayes’ PROCESS moderation analysis to explore the link between caregiver frailty, weekly care hours, and perceptions of financial difficulty, social support, and anxiety. In this analysis, we included 474 caregivers with relatively complete data on all of the variables. In regression analysis after controlling for gender and age, social loneliness (β = 0.245), frailty (β = 0.199), financial difficulty (β = 0.196), care time (β = 0.143), and navigation confidence (β = 0.131) were all significant. We then used PROCESS Model 6 to determine the significance of the direct, indirect, and total effects through the serial mediation model. The model pathway from frailty to care time to financial difficulty to social loneliness to anxiety was significant. The proportions of family caregivers who were moderately frail, anxious, and experiencing social loneliness after eighteen months of the COVID-19 pandemic found in this survey should be of concern to policymakers and healthcare providers.

Keywords: family caregivers; carers; anxiety; frailty; loneliness; social support; COVID-19; mediation analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/14/8636/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/14/8636/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:19:y:2022:i:14:p:8636-:d:863878

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().