Dear Dr. Elekwachi ,

Naturally fatal chronic illnesses caregivers have more levels of psychological distress. But I think it is related to their spirituality .

Regards,

Hello

I thought your project sounded very interesting, so I searched for papers comparing the impact of caring for those with cancer compared with the impact of caring for people with chronic psychiatric illness. However, I could find few papers that gave comparisons; they concentrated on one diagnosis or the other. I don't know if the following are of any interest. This first paper relates to the care of children - the severity of illness (diagnoses included cancer) did not predict level of caregiver distress, but sociodemographic variables showed that caregivers from families with lower income reported more distress:

Canning, R. D., Harris, E. S., & Kelleher, K. J. (1996). Factors predicting distress among caregivers to children with chronic medical conditions. Journal of Pediatric Psychology, 21(5), 735-749.

http://jpepsy.oxfordjournals.org/content/21/5/735.full.pdf

These review papers may use some references that are relevant to you:

Rees, J., O'Boyle, C., & MacDonagh, R. (2001). Quality of life: impact of chronic illness on the partner. Journal of the Royal Society of medicine, 94(11), 563-566.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1282240/pdf/0940563.pdf

Pinquart, M., & Sörensen, S. (2007). Correlates of physical health of informal caregivers: a meta-analysis. The Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, 62(2), P126-P137.

http://psychsocgerontology.oxfordjournals.org/content/62/2/P126.long

I will follow subsequent answers sent to you with interest

Best wishes with your research

Mary

Thank you Aghakhani for your comments they are really insightful. It will go a long way in helping in the study. 

Thank you Mary for those insightful resources that you sent to me. I have gone through all of them and they are really crucial papers and I will integrate them in my literature review. The very important point you made is that there is little literature comparing caregiver psychological distress among fatal and non-fatal chronic illnesses. In Africa and in Nigeria it is even smaller. This study I hope will help to increase knowledge in this area of research. 

Regards 

Chimezie

Dear Dr. Elekwachi

I am a member of a reseach team work on psychological intervention  for End stage cancer patient in home care and I think caregivers of fatal chronic illnesses have very existantial problem such as meaning of life They are faced with the death of loved ones. thay have pre- grief Stages.They have alot of question such as why me? why my loved ones? And I think non fatal chronic illnesses  doesn't  have this problem

Dear Chimezie,

First of all, it depends on whether the caregiver is a family member or a paid person (home care worker). Much more results come from the psychosocial workplace situation for employees in this profession, with higher values for stress from near-death experiences or the death of patients. Generally speaking, if the eligible criterion is “fatality of the disease”, there will be different levels of distress between your groups, indeed.

I believe that if the caregiver is a famiy member, they will have higher levels of distress because of their potentially emotional attachment for their family member who is experiencing either mental or a medical illness. I feel a professional caregiver would also have distress in coping with the ongoing stressors of managing a case load or a client who is in distress. I find that the care attendent would suffer from vicarious trauma for example. Also, if mental illness has been life long, a caregiver may experience different stress than one who has been newly exposed to a life threatening medical condition. Additonal considerations are the problem solving abilities of a care giver as well as their ability to cope with stress associated with providing care. The length of time as a care giver should be a consideration. Another avenue to consider is the type of care. Mental health may be monitoring behaviors and offering resources to mangage care. Medical condition may require actual hands on /physical care which changes the dynamic of a relationship.

A very interesting question. Mental illness vs. medical illness. Good luck with your work. 

Dear colleague,

Except for being fatal and non fatal chronic illnesses  for clients, Socoa; support especially family support can help them.

 In one of my articles in title of:

"Hemodialysis Patients' Perceived Social Support "

i discussed about

I hope it is useful.

Regards,