Caring for a person with dementia often results in high levels of perceived burden, poorer overall mental health, and a reduced quality of life (QoL). Using a sample of 106 dementia caregivers, we examined associations among caregiver objective and subjective burden (from the Burden Assessment Scale), mindfulness (from The Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire) and a mental health latent variable (with the Beck Depression Inventory, the Beck Anxiety Inventory, the Depression and Anxiety Stress Scale, and the Quality of Life Inventory as indicators). As expected, we found that lower levels of burden and greater mindfulness were associated with better mental health. Also in line with study hypotheses and with the stress-appraisal-coping model developed by Lazarus and Folkman (1984), we found that subjective burden partially mediates the relationship between objective burden and mental health outcomes. Specifically, subjective appraisals of caregiving appeared to indirectly affect the association between the concrete costs of caregiving and psychological outcomes in dementia caregivers. This finding suggests the potential for negative psychological outcomes to be improved by addressing caregivers’ appraisals of the caregiving experience. Finally, we hypothesized that mindfulness would moderate the association between burden (objective and subjective) and mental health outcomes such that in people who are more mindful, burden has less of an impact on mental health. This hypothesis was not supported. Thus, while greater mindfulness does appear to be associated with better mental health, being more mindful does not appear to dampen the effect of burden on mental health. Research and clinical implications are discussed.

中文翻译：

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痴呆症患者家庭成员的正念、照顾者负担和心理健康之间的相互作用。

照顾痴呆症患者通常会导致高水平的感知负担、整体心理健康状况较差以及生活质量 (QoL) 下降。使用 106 名痴呆症护理人员的样本，我们检查了护理人员客观和主观负担（来自负担评估量表）、正念（来自五方面正念问卷）和心理健康潜在变量（贝克抑郁量表、贝克焦虑）之间的关联清单、抑郁和焦虑压力量表以及生活质量清单作为指标）。正如预期的那样，我们发现较低的负担和更好的正念与更好的心理健康有关。同样符合研究假设和由 Lazarus 和 Folkman (1984) 开发的压力评估应对模型，我们发现主观负担在一定程度上调节了客观负担与心理健康结果之间的关系。具体而言，对护理的主观评价似乎间接影响了护理的具体成本与痴呆症护理人员的心理结果之间的关联。这一发现表明，通过解决护理人员对护理体验的评估，可以改善负面心理结果的潜力。最后，我们假设正念会缓和负担（客观和主观）与心理健康结果之间的关联，因此在注意力更集中的人中，负担对心理健康的影响较小。这个假设没有得到支持。因此，虽然更大的正念似乎确实与更好的心理健康有关，更加注意似乎并没有减弱负担对心理健康的影响。讨论了研究和临床意义。