Relationships between caregiving burden and psychological abuse in the family caregivers of the demented elderly in an urban area of Korea

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to examine the relationships between caregiving burden and psychological abuse to care-recipients with a sample of primary family caregivers of elderly with dementia. Semi-structured interview survey was administered to 300 primary family caregivers in Seoul and Busan city, Korea. In our analyses, 245 complete data was used. Structural Equation Modeling result showed that only "negative feeling" , one of the caregiving burden, was significantly associated with two factors of psychological abuse "verbal aggression" and "rejection" . This finding suggests the importance of providing family caregivers with supports focusing on their negative feeling in order to prevent psychological abuse to the care-recipients.