Abstract

GARBELINI, Adriana; SANTOS, Patricia; COBO, Viviane  and  SCORSOLINI-COMIN, Fabio. Associations between family functioning, overload and mental health in caregivers. Psic., Saúde & Doenças [online]. 2022, vol.23, n.1, pp.319-330.  Epub Apr 30, 2022. ISSN 1645-0086.  https://doi.org/10.15309/22psd230130.

The aim of this study is to verify associations between measures of family functioning, perceived overload, quality of life, anxiety and depression of the family caregiver. For that it was designed to cross-sectional, correlational study with 101 family caregivers. The sociodemographic and family information questionnaire, ZBI scale, WHOQOL-brief, BAI and BDI-II inventories and FACES IV scale were used, using descriptive statistics, correlation tests and comparison between groups. As a result was mean age of caregivers was 49.7 years (± 12.5 years); the majority of women (88%), 76.3% had an overload, 49.5% had anxiety symptoms, 45.5% had symptoms of depression, and 23.8% had evaluated their families as dysfunctional. Functional families had superior results regarding family cohesion, flexibility, communication and satisfaction, and quality of life. Caregivers with overloads had superior results on the chaotic subscale (excessive flexibility) and on anxiety and depression. As the overload increases, the chance of belonging to a dysfunctional family increases, decreases family flexibility and communication. It was concluded that flexibility and communication showed significant associations with overload, which reinforces the hypothesis that the family can, to some extent, mediate the perception of overload and its effects on the mental health and quality of life of the caregiver.

Keywords : Family; Caregivers; Anxiety; Depression; Quality of life.

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