Benefits of Caregiving
Caregiving can actually provide a health advantage as well for some caregivers. Caregivers maintained higher physical performance when compared to non-caregivers. They declined less in tasks than the low-intensity caregivers and non-caregivers such as: walking pace, grip strength, and the speed with which they could rise from a chair. Caregivers also did significantly better on memory tasks than did non-caregivers over a 2 year time frame. Caregivers scored at the level of someone 10 years younger than them, although both groups (caregivers vs. non-caregivers) were both in their eighties.
While this role brings with it high costs, high rewards are also there too. This is known as "Caregiver gain". These rewards are emotional, psychological, and spiritual such as:
- Growing confidence in one's ability
- Feelings of personal satisfaction
- Increased family closeness
Women who become caregivers are healthy enough to take on the task, therefore it makes sense that they'd be stronger than their non-caregiver counterparts, and remain stronger than them. The demands of caregiving cause caregivers to move around a lot, and stay on their feet. Therefore, exercise can improve both your physical health and cognition. The complex thought required by caregiving can ward off cognitive decline. This includes activities such as:
- Monitoring medications
- Scheduling
- Financial responsibilities
Other benefits mentioned by caregivers are that it gives their life meaning, and produces pride in their success as a caregiver. They are also able to give back to someone else. It has also been noted that benefit-finding can be an important way of dealing with stress. The Perceived Benefits of Caregiving scale includes 11 items with questions such as, "Has caregiving given more meaning to your life?" and "Has caregiving made you feel important?" There was an alpha coefficient of 0.7 for this scale. These benefits of caregiving have been found to be associated with improved caregiver adaptation to those who are caring for someone with dementia, end of life caregiving, and bereavement. A study done with dementia caregivers showed that finding the benefits in caregiving predicted a better response to a caregiver intervention over a time period of 12 months.
Read more about this topic: Caregiver Syndrome
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