Hou, Ming-Mo

Background: Family caregivers' distinct depressive-symptom trajectories are understudied and have been examined independently during end-of-life (EOL) caregiving or bereavement, making it difficult to validate two competing hypotheses (wear-and-tear vs. relief) of caregiving effects on bereavement. Existing studies may also miss short-term heterogeneity in depressive symptoms during the immediate postloss period due to lengthy delays in the first postloss assessment.

Background: Bereaved families endure tremendous grief. However, few studies have longitudinally investigated caregivers' bereavement grief for more than one year postloss and none is from family-oriented Asian countries. Objectives: We explored longitudinal changes in and modifiable predictors of severe depressive symptoms for Taiwanese family caregivers of terminally ill cancer patients over the first two years postloss.