The Caregiving Career: Responses and Strategies of Caregivers, Care Partners, and Caretakers of Persons with Dementia

AI Summary

Caregiving phases show similar responses: moderate stress, moderate depression risk, and substantial negative emotions across caregivers, care partners, and caretakers.
Resourcefulness differed by phase with caretakers scoring lowest in personal, social and spiritual resourcefulness.
All groups need resourcefulness training, with bereaved caretakers showing greatest need; future research should examine contextual factors.

Issues Ment Health Nurs. 2026 May 29:1-7. doi: 10.1080/01612840.2026.2657400. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

Every minute, a family member begins their “caregiving career” with the primary responsibility of caring for someone with dementia. Their career may progress through in-home caregiving (i.e. caregivers), to partnering with a facility (i.e. care partners), to caretaking after bereavement (i.e. caretakers). Although each phase presents challenges that adversely affect one’s health, responses to such challenges (i.e. stress, cognitions, and emotions) and strategies to manage them (i.e. resourcefulness) may vary across the career trajectory. Resourcefulness Theory^© informed this preliminary analysis of baseline data from a randomized trial with 145 caregivers, 111 care partners, and 62 caretakers of persons with dementia recruited from the community and online. The three groups were compared on measures of stress, depressive cognitions, negative emotions, and resourcefulness (personal, social, and spiritual) using one-way analysis of variance. The three groups reported similar stress (F = 0.986; p = 0.374), depressive cognitions (F = 0.184; p = 0.832), and negative emotions (F = 0.123; p = 0.884). Mean scores indicated moderate stress (M = 20.08; SD = 7.21), moderate risk for depression (M = 9.23; SD = 6.83), and substantial negative emotions (M = 6.80; SD = 2.81). Resourcefulness scores for all three groups indicated a moderate need for resourcefulness training, however, they differed (personal: F = 2.94; p = 0.027; social: F = 2.44; p = 0.045; spiritual: F = 4.00; p = 0.010) with caretakers scoring lowest. The findings indicated that across the “caregiving career,” there were similar responses to caregiving challenges regardless of caregiving phase. Future research should identify contextual factors associated with those responses. Although resourcefulness scores indicated all three groups would benefit from resourcefulness training, bereaved caretakers showed the greatest need, suggesting the importance of teaching them resourcefulness skills.