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Cross cultural issues in caregiving for persons with dementia: Do familism values reduce burden and distress?

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Abstract

While family caregiving for persons with dementia has been recognized as a major stressor for over twenty years, attention to the role of cultural values in influencing the stress and coping process of caregivers is rarely studied. This article summarizes individual studies from our lab group that include Latino caregivers, Korean and Korean American caregivers, Japanese American caregivers, and African American caregivers. The role of familism as a cultural value that was assumed to lead to greater acceptance of the caregiving role and to better mental health outcomes for caregivers was explored in each of these groups. Familism was found to vary across groups as expected based on acculturation to Western values of individualism. However, the relationship of familism to caregiving burden was not consistent across ethnic groups and was either independent of caregiving outcomes, or was positively correlated with distress. These results suggest that assumptions about cultural influences on caregiving need to be reexamined and explored in greater depth empirically.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Ethel Percy Andrus Gerontology Center, University of Southern California, 90089-0191, Los Angeles, CA

    Bob G. Knight Ph.D. (the Merle H. Bensinger Professor of Gerontology and Professor of Psychology), Gia S. Robinson (doctoral candidate), Crystal V. Flynn Longmire (a doctoral student in Gerontology), Miae Chun (a doctoral student in Gerontology) & Jung Hyun Kim (a doctoral student in Gerontology)

  2. the Department of Social Welfare, School of Public Policy and Social Research, University of California Los Angeles, USA

    Kayoko Nakao (a doctoral student)

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  1. Bob G. Knight Ph.D.
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  2. Gia S. Robinson
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  3. Crystal V. Flynn Longmire
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  4. Miae Chun
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  5. Kayoko Nakao
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  6. Jung Hyun Kim
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Correspondence to Bob G. Knight Ph.D..

Additional information

He is the principal investigator for the NIA-funded Stress, Ethnicity, and Caregiving Study (AG 16307) and executive director of the Los Angeles Caregiver Resource Center.

Her research interests encompass the role of cultural values, personality, and social support in the stress and coping process of ethnic minority dementia caregivers.

Her research interests are caregiver stress, health effects of stress, and race group health disparities.

Her research interests include the stress and coping process of Korean American dementia caregivers, specifically the relationship between burden and family solidarity.

Her research interests involve cross-national and cross-cultural comparisons of the issues related to gerontology and geriatric social work.

Her research interests lie in the health effects of stress in Korean dementia caregivers.

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Knight, B.G., Robinson, G.S., Flynn Longmire, C.V. et al. Cross cultural issues in caregiving for persons with dementia: Do familism values reduce burden and distress?. Ageing International 27, 70–94 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12126-003-1003-y

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