Coping with Caregiver Stress and Burden

Caregivers’ feelings of stress and burden can be assessed with standardized questionnaires and interviews. Although stress and burden are not diagnostic labels in and of themselves, they are key components of the profile of psychological distress experienced by many caregivers.

Tools for Adult Caregivers:

• Zarit Burden Interview
• Brief Measures of Secondary Role and Intrapsychic Strains
• Caregiver Self-Assessment Questionnaire
• Perceived Benefits of Caregiving

Caregivers develop coping strategies for the objective, as well as subjective, burdens of providing care. Some of these strategies are predictive of either positive resilience or poorer mental and physical health outcomes.

Measures for assessing Caregiving Coping include:

• Revised Scale for Caregiving Self-Efficacy
• Perceived Support Scale
• Picot Caregiver Rewards Scale
• Coping Health Inventory for Parents

Tools for Parent Caregivers:

• Impact on Family Scale
• The Psychosocial Assessment Tool
• Parenting Stress Index
• Family Burden of Injury Interview