Browsing by Subject "Caregivers"
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Item A phenomenological approach to understanding the changes in marital intimacy for caregivers married to a spouse with Alzheimer's Disease(2005-05) Adams, Mark S.; Harris, Steven M.; Tacon, Anna M.; Stelle, Charlie D.; Wampler, Karen S.Alzheimer's disease or a related dementia (ADRD) can create enormous strain and burden for family caregivers. But the potential for relationship disruption via changes in intimacy seem to be the greatest for couples in long-term marriages. I conducted intensive interviews with spouses who provide care for their partner with ADRD. I wanted to better understand how some spousal caregivers had managed to maintain a sense of continuity in their marital intimacy, and to understand what may have kept others from maintaining that same closeness. I also explored the role of physical intimacy and/or sexuality in facilitating the process of marital continuity. I proceeded from the assumption that people want to feel close to those they love and that a person can be active in creating that closeness. I believe that the sexual relationship holds a great potential for maintaining feelings of closeness and connection. I used a phenomenological approach to describe, analyze, and interpret data of spouses' lived experiences. Then I attempted to extrapolate those experiences into clinical interventions or suggestions to assist clinicians who may work with similar couples. My analysis shows that spouses who provide care for their partner with ADRD moved through a process of change that affected their opportunities for further intimacy. The disease processes eventually led to a diagnosis of ADRD for the impaired spouse. A sense of uncertainty or ambiguity grew as the symptoms of the disease increased. Caregiving spouses were faced with the challenge of emotionally and psychologically separating the symptoms of ADRD from the personhood of their partner. The growing ambiguity was usually accompanied by challenges (both emotional and practical) to cope and adjust to the new dynamics. Adjustment and working through the challenges did not automatically mean that the spouse who was providing care would feel emotionally close to his or her partner, although it was much more likely. There is one last overarching influence that affects the whole process – marital history. This study has implications for clinical theory and interventions for practitioners working with couples or spouses who provide care to a partner with ADRD.Item A semantic differential measurement of caregivers' attitudes toward the alcoholic(Texas Tech University, 1973-05) Algeo, John DerisNot availableItem Alzheimer's patient caregivers: experimental drug treatment participation as a moderator of caregiver outcomes(Texas Tech University, 1995-05) Banken, Cheryl HallCaring for a family member with Alzheimer's disease has been associated with a variety of negative outcomes. Hence, it is important to gain an understanding of the factors that contribute to these outcomes as an avenue toward identifying interventions that may have moderating effects. There is a growing body of evidence that psychological resources and social support can mitigate the impact of caregiving stressors. Psychological resources may include appraisals, coping skills and expectancies, while social support may range fi^om formal services to informal family networks. The purpose of the present study was to investigate how involvement in an experimental drug treatment affected expectancies and/or appraisals about caregiving and the care receiver's condition. Antecedent variables that have been inconsistently linked with negative caregiver outcomes were also examined. This study had two phases of assessment, with 166 caregivers participating at Time 1 and 109 caregivers six weeks later at Time 2. There were four treatment conditions reflecting two different drug conditions, a screening failure condition and a group uninvolved in research. Within each treatment group, both primary and non-primary caregivers were assessed for burden, depression, hopelessness, anger, desire to institutionalize (DTI), locus of control, positive outcomes and optimistic expectancies.Item The Effects of Acculturation on the Mexican-American Dementia Caregiver Experience(2005-12-19) Dominguez, Gabriel Angel; Silver, CherylThere is a paucity of research to understand the experience of the Mexican-American caregiver of family members with dementia. The proposed study will investigate how acculturation affects the caregiver experience in the Mexican-American culture. Correlations between caregiver burden, problem behaviors, and positive aspects of caregiving will be computed and compared between participants at two acculturation levels. More caregiver burden and more positive aspects of caregiving are hypothesized to exist in the group with low acculturation, although the correlations between these two variables are expected to be similar in the acculturation groups. These results would imply that acculturation affects Mexican-American caregivers in both positive and negative ways.Item Living well with aphasia : spousal involvement as an integral component in stroke recovery(2011-05) McCabe, Kathryn Rose; Harris, Joyce L.; Shamapant, ShilpaStroke has the ability to chronically alter both a person’s understanding and or use of language. Aphasia is a term that represents the loss or impairment of language function as a consequence of brain damage caused by a stroke and current data reveal that at least 25% of all strokes result in aphasia. Spouses often play a pivotal role in a stroke patient’s journey towards recovery. For this reason, there is a dire need for increased knowledge regarding spousal psychosocial welfare and increased insight into the experiences of these individual’s altered life situations. This paper considers aphasia, by nature of its deficits, a family disorder. Additionally, the contents of this paper explore the significance of caregiver coping strategies and ongoing caregiver involvement in recovery as a mechanism towards increased well being. Evidence to confirm the effects of stroke on spouses, as well as to support involvement of spouses in speech-language treatment to facilitate living well with aphasia, was obtained through primary and secondary research. Primary research was compiled through a telephone interview with the spouse of a 62-year-old male with aphasia while secondary research was conducted through an extensive literature search from 2000 to 2011.Item Self-complexity and family caregivers of Alzheimer's disease victims(Texas Tech University, 1991-05) Fankhauser, Betty LanierThere are strong indications that the elderly population of the United States is ever increasing in number. The most significant increase has been in those over age 85. This becomes particularly important when one considers the fact that Alzheimer's disease is for the most part a disease of the elderly. During the past decade, a great deal of interest has been shown in helping the caregivers of Alzheimer's disease patients deal with the oftentimes intense, long-term demands placed upon them while caring for victims of this basically unremitting disease. The present study was specifically interested in how the caregivers cope with stress-related burden and depression, with the special contribution of this study being the inclusion of Linville's self-complexity model. It is a model for examining self-complexity as a stress-related cognitive buffer or moderator variable. When in a multiplicative interaction with stress, self-complexity is hypothesized to provide a buffering effect on the adverse impact of stressful events. Participants were 74 adult family caregivers. The study involved two sessions, spaced a month apart, with the participants completing a packet of six instruments during each session. The participants reported life stresses, sense of burden, depression, and caregiver perception of patient level of functioning for the past month. In addition, they completed a measure of their self-complexity at each session. Four hypotheses were examined, using the data from the test periods. Preliminary analyses of self-complexity scores were quite close to those of Linville, However, when regression analyses were used, the results did not confirm Linville's previous research. The hypotheses testing did not support self-complexity as a stress-related buffer for family caregivers of Alzheimer's disease victims. The precise reasons for this are unclear, but multicollinearity appears to have been a limitation.Item Time use of households with and without a wheelchair-confined member: a case study approach(Texas Tech University, 1995-05) Hunt, Naomi E. W.In addition to the demands on resources experienced by all families, those families with a member who has a disability must often accomplish more with fewer resources. Few records exist of the time adjustments that result. This study explored the household time use of couples with a male member who had mobility impairment. The research addressed how time is allocated over 24-hour periods when the female spouse is the caregiver for the male spouse confined to a wheelchair and how much of the time allocations can be attributed to the disability. The cases consisted of 12 retired couples. Each of 6 couples included a male spouse confined to a wheelchair. A comparison group consisted of 6 couples in which neither spouse had a disability. Time-use data were collected by direct, naturalistic observation methodology over the entire 24-hour period for 2 days for each couple. This resulted in the accumulation of records of detailed daily living activities difficult to obtain by other research methods. Data were analyzed by group and individual totals for 18 activity categories and also by primary and secondary tasks. Analysis revealed that females with a wheelchair-confined spouse allocated more time to physical and non-physical care of household members, food preparation, dishwashing, housecleaning, maintenance, paid and unpaid work and "other" activities than females in the comparison group. The female caregivers spent no time in organization participation and less time than comparison females in shopping, clothing construction, clothing care, management, social/recreational activities, eating and personal care. Females with a wheelchair-confined spouse spent an average of 122 minutes each 24-hour period on caregiving. Disability prohibited or severely restricted many activities of the male members with an average of 7.5 hours more time spent per 24-hour period than those without disability on the activities of personal care, eating and waiting. Frequency of interruptions of daily tasks were found to increase for female caregivers. Societal costs are incurred within households, and in society as a whole, with the onset of disability. The resulting time adjustments imposed upon all members have assessed In this study. Resource management of disability in a family setting is an area which merits continued research.