Caregiving for Parkinson’s disease patients: an exploration of a stress-appraisal model for quality of life and burden

Using an extension of Chappell and Reid’s (2002) stress-appraisal model, this study examined the relationships between a variety of caregiver stressors, appraisal, and protective factors associated with the burden and quality of life of Parkinson’s disease caregivers. A total of 136 Parkinson’s disease caregivers (39 males, 97 females; mean age= 64.59 years) participated in this study. Path analysis using Maximum Likelihood criterion, with Bollen-Stine bootstrap and standardised estimates was used to assess the model. Evaluation of the proposed model revealed that it was a good fit of the data. Supporting the hypotheses and Chappell and Reid’s (2002) model, were the findings that caree functional dependency and behavioural problems had an adverse impact on caregiver burden. In addition, caree functional dependency was found to be adversely related to caregiver quality of life. The results also found that frequency of breaks, perceived social support, and caregiver-caree relationship quality acted as protective factors of caregiver burden. Furthermore, the frequency of breaks acted as a protective factor of caregiver quality of life. This research provides an important contribution to a growing field of research applying theoretical models to investigate the stressors, appraisals, and protective factors that impact caregiver well-being.