Study Finds Elderly Care Stressful for Daughters

Caring for an elderly, ailing parent can be heartbreaking duty for anyone. A new study suggests that is literally the case as well, and that daughters may be most at risk.

Stanford University research presented recently measured the cardiovascular distress of women caring at home for their parents and spouses, all suffering from dementia.

The findings showed that heart rates and blood pressure of daughters rose more than did wives’ during social interactions with the ailing loved one.

Lead researcher Abby King said the results need additional study but suggested that differences may be explained in how daughters and wives perceive their roles.

“In general it may be that daughters go into their caregiving relationship with a different set of expectations than wives,” said King, an assistant professor of health research and policy with the Stanford Center for Research in Disease Prevention.

“Wives have taken vows and made a commitment to this person. That’s usually not as explicit with children. A lot of daughters may resent their role,” she said.

The study, conducted last year, involved 81 San Francisco Bay area women between the ages of 50 and 85. Each was caring at home for a parent or spouse with dementia resulting from Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease or stroke.

About 57% of the women were wives caring for their husbands, while the rest were daughters taking care of a mother or father. The daughters, on average, were about eight years younger than the wives.

In a laboratory setting, researchers first asked the women to talk about the negative aspects of their caregiving. Then the subjects were told to go home and regularly measure their blood pressure and heart rate during the course of a normal day. The women were also instructed to make notes on a computer.

During social interactions with the ailing relative, the daughters’ heart rates and blood pressure levels rose significantly more than those of the wives.

And in the daily logs kept by the women, “daughters recorded significantly more distress in interpersonal interactions.”

“They reported having more difficulty relating to their care recipient--their father or mother--than did the wives, and all those reports were linked to increases in blood pressure and heart rate responses” King said.

The results correspond to studies that have charted how elder caregiving affects mental health, said Dr. Leonard Pearlin, professor of sociology at the University of Maryland.

“When you look instead at psychological outcomes, particularly depression, you find very parallel results: that daughters, more than wives, experience stress,” said Pearlin, who has studied the social effects of Alzheimer’s disease.

Pearlin, who had not yet read King’s study, suggested that a daughter caring for an elderly parent is more likely to be younger and more burdened--with responsibilities for her own family or a job, for example--than a wife caring for an elderly husband.

In addition, a daughter may be dealing with conflict among siblings who disagree about their roles as caregivers.

He agreed with King’s suggestion that a daughter may resent being saddled with the duties.

King said the study--believed to be the first measuring physical demands of caregiving in the home setting--could serve as a warning as a greater percentage of American society becomes elderly and requires care.

“You don’t like to see those kinds of chronic elevations in blood pressure or heart rates, especially since care is given over years and years,” King said.

King noted that her research did not include sons and husbands as subjects in part because they are far less likely to serve as caregivers.

The study is part of a larger federally funded research project aimed at improving the health of older caregivers. It was presented March 26 in New Orleans at the annual meeting of the Society of Behavioral Medicine.