Pain-attributed care task difficulty among dementia caregivers with chronic pain

TL;DR

Dementia caregivers with chronic pain often blame their pain for caregiving difficulties, especially for daily living tasks.

Contribution

The study reveals racial differences in how caregivers attribute pain to caregiving task difficulty.

Findings

Caregivers rated pain as a major contributor to difficulty with daily living tasks.

Black caregivers attributed less difficulty with basic tasks to pain compared to White caregivers.

Abstract

Chronic pain is highly prevalent among dementia family caregivers (henceforth “caregivers”). We used a nationwide sample of caregivers with chronic pain to identify the extent to which caregivers attribute pain to any difficulty they have with caregiving.

Caregivers (N = 269) reported if they experienced difficulty performing ten individual care tasks and if ‘yes’, how much of the difficulty they attributed to pain (0 = not a reason for my difficulty, 10 = the biggest reason for my difficulty). We ran ANOVA models to determine between-group differences in pain-attributed difficulty with care tasks.

When asked about the extent to which pain contributed to the difficulty helping care recipients with a given care task, caregivers’ average response was 6.81 for basic activities of daily living and 6.49 for instrumental activities of daily living. Compared to White caregivers, Black caregivers attributed less of their difficulty with basic activities of daily living to pain (estimate = –1.17, p = 0.04).

Caregiver pain is not only highly prevalent may also be consequential to caregiving outcomes.

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