Ebeveyni alzheimer hastası olan yetişkinlerde depresyon, kaygı, yas ve büyümeyi yordayan faktörler: bir çoklu yöntem araştırması.

The main purpose of the current study was to investigate the lived experiences of Turkish adult children as caregivers of parents with Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). A multi-method design was employed to achieve this aim, and a qualitative and quantitative study were performed respectively. In the qualitative strand, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 20 adult children, and data was analyzed through Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). Six super-ordinate themes were emerged from the obtained data, which were (1) etiology of the disease, (2) changes and losses, (3) coping strategies, (4) factors helping/hindering caregiving process, (5) unique pathology of the disease, and (6) reluctance to nursing home placement (NHP). The quantitative strand aimed to explore the roles of various background/contextual variables, primary stressors/disease-related factors, secondary stressors, execarbating or mitigating factors in predicting negative (i.e. depression, anxiety, anticipatory grief) and positive (i.e. growth) caregiver outcomes. Data for this strand was collected from 190 informal adult children caregivers of AD. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that different sets of variables were influential in predicting different caregiver outcomes. While burden, optimistic/seeking-social support, helplessness-coping and perceived social support were associated with caregiver depression and anxiety; only subjective burden and helplessness coping were associated with pre-death grief responses. Additionally, among all other variables, only optimistic/seeking social support was positively associated with growth scores of the caregivers. Moderation analysis revealed that perceived social support had moderated the relationship between caregiver burden and various caregiving outcomes. Besides, problem-solving coping buffered the negative impact of subjective burden on caregiver depression. Ph.D. - Doctoral Progra