Is There More to Resourcefulness Than Personal and Social Skills?
Jaclene A Zauszniewski, Kayla Herbell, Christopher Burant
PMID 30043688WHAT IT FOUND
Among women caring for relatives with dementia, higher self-help and help-seeking skills and more spiritual practices were associated with lower stress and fewer depressive symptoms.
It does not show that teaching these skills or spiritual practices improves caregiver health.
Key findings
01Total resourcefulness was more strongly associated with perceived stress, depressive symptoms and self-assessed health than spiritual practices were.
02Caregivers high on personal resourcefulness, social resourcefulness and spiritual practices had a mean self-assessed health score double that of caregivers low on all three, with perceived stress 26% lower and depressive symptoms 58% lower.
03When spiritual practices were added after resourcefulness, they accounted for an extra 3% of perceived stress and 2% of depressive symptoms, but not self-assessed health.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
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What it does not show
The sample was a convenience sample of women caring for people with dementia, so the findings may not apply to men, other caregivers or other settings. The study was a secondary analysis of baseline data from a parent trial, not a randomised test of an intervention. The design measured associations at one time, so it cannot show that resourcefulness or spiritual practices caused better health. Participants generally rated their health as good to excellent, limiting relevance to less healthy caregivers. Self-assessed health was measured with a three-item scale, and the spiritual practices scale may not capture spiritual resourcefulness. The spiritual practices scale is influenced by health status and is scaled differently from the resourcefulness scale.
Declared interests
No conflicts-of-interest statement is included in the supplied text; the article is listed as supported by NIH extramural research.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that resourcefulness training or spiritual practices reduce caregiver stress or depression. This was a cross-sectional secondary analysis of associations in women caregivers, not a tested intervention.