The association between informal caregiving and behavioral risk factors: a cross-sectional study
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
The association between informal caregiving and behavioral risk factors: a cross-sectional study Sophie Gottschalk1
•
Hans-Helmut Ko¨nig1 • Christian Brettschneider1
Received: 21 November 2019 / Revised: 4 April 2020 / Accepted: 27 May 2020 The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Objectives This study aimed to compare informal caregivers/dementia caregivers to non-caregivers regarding alcohol consumption, smoking behavior, obesity, and insufficient physical activity and to identify caregiving-related factors (caregiving intensity, length of caregiving, relationship to the care recipient, and type of caregiving task) which are associated with behavioral risk factors in caregivers/dementia caregivers. Methods Using cross-sectional data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, we performed the statistical analyses applying logistic regression models and accounted for confounding using the entropy balancing approach. Results For caregivers (n = 12,044), the odds of overweight/obesity and smoking were higher (OR = 1.14/1.34, p \ 0.05) and the odds of binge drinking and insufficient physical activity were lower (OR = 0.86/0.83, p \ 0.05) than for noncaregivers (n = 45,925). For dementia caregivers, results point in the same direction. Caregiving-related variables tend to influence the likelihood of behavioral risk factors, but depending on the kind of factor considered, in different directions. Conclusions Being a caregiver is associated with risky and health-promoting behavior. However, the effects are relatively low. Future studies should study potential pathways between caregiving characteristics, psychological impacts of caregiving, health behavior, and mental or physical health. Keywords Informal care Behavioral risk factors Alcohol consumption Tobacco use Physical activity Obesity
Introduction In the United States, an estimated number of 43.5 million adults provides unpaid care (National Alliance for Caregiving (NAC) and AARP Public Policy Institute 2015). The demand for so-called informal caregivers (CG) is
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s00038-020-01402-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. & Sophie Gottschalk [email protected] Hans-Helmut Ko¨nig [email protected] Christian Brettschneider [email protected] 1
Department of Health Economics and Health Services Research, Hamburg Center for Health Economics, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany
probably rising as the number of potential care recipients (population aged 65 plus) is projected to increase (United Nations 2017). The effects of informal caregiving on the CG have received considerable attention. Physical and mental health were primarily found to be negatively associated with informal caregiving (Bauer and Sousa-Poza 2015). However, more recent findings show that caregiving is also associated with benefits, such as personal growth and meaning of
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