Chen, Lin

Objectives: Providing care to individuals with dementia places burden on family caregivers, which may relate to depressive symptoms. Although leisure activities may serve as a coping resource to relieve caregiving stress, only a few studies exist on how leisure and depressive symptoms associate in dementia caregivers. Moreover, less is known about the role of gender in this relationship. Thus, this study examined the relationship among leisure activity, gender and depressive symptoms.

This study characterized emotional connections between largely female caregivers and female care recipients with dementia living in nursing homes with the research question: How does interpersonal communication between family caregivers and older adults with dementia convey enacted emotional support? Ten dyads (8 with at least one female) of regularly-involved family caregivers (7 female; 3 male) and their relatives with dementia (5 female; 5 male) were videotaped.