Objective: This study examines the relationship between cargiving stress, coping styles, caregiver guilt, and depression for family caregivers of dementia patients. Also the parallel multiple mediating effects of coping styles and caregiver guilt in the caregiving stress process were investigated.
Methods: Total 204 family members caring for dementia patients participated in an online survey on caregiving stress, depression, coping styles, and caring guilt. Among them, excluding multiple participation and incomplete questionnaires, data from 123 people were analyzed using the SPSS program as a multiple parallel mediating model of Hayes (2018) PROCESS macro.
Results: First, caring stress was closely related to caregiver guilt, emotion-focused coping style, wishful thinking and depression. Second, the level of depression of the caring family was ‘very severe’, and the stress of caring had a direct effect on the depression. Third, the level of caring guilt of family caregivers was also very high, and there was a significant positive correlation with caring stress and depression. Fourth, as a result of examining the parallel multiple mediating effects of coping styles and caregiver guilt, only caregiver guilt showed mediating effects.
Conclusions: In order to prevent depression in family caregivers of dementia patients, it is recommended to control the caregiver guilt. Also further studies are needed to examine the the effectiveness of different coping styles.