The more time a person spends helping a sick loved one, the more their personal well-being suffers, a new study suggests.
- The more time people spend caring for their sick or losing loved ones, the more their well-being decreases.
- This phenomenon is observed whatever the context of care.
- Women who help a loved one are most affected by the decline in life satisfaction and emotional health.
In France, 9.3 million people, including 500,000 minors, help daily a loved one who is losing their independence or has a disability. Few of them question their support seen as a self-evident gesture.
However, a study from the University of Zurich (UZH) shows that the more time people spend caring for their sick loved one, the more their well-being suffers, regardless of the context of care. The discovery is detailed in an article published on November 25, 2024 in the journal Psychological Science.
Caregivers forget about their own well-being
To determine the impact on mental health of devoting oneself to helping a loved one in difficulty, researchers surveyed 28,663 caregivers from the Netherlands, Germany and Australia. The questionnaires assessed, among other things, their life satisfaction and mental health.
“The results of our analyzes showed a decline in well-being in the years following the start of care”explains co-author Michael Krämer from the Department of Psychology at UZH in a press release. “These declines were consistent across different aspects of well-being – life satisfaction, emotional experiences, depression/anxiety and loneliness – and were more pronounced and longer lasting for women than for men.” The latter were, in fact, more numerous to report feeling loneliness and anxiety.
By focusing on the time spent caring for the sick loved one, scientists found that the more people devoted themselves to caregiving tasks, the more their well-being suffered, regardless of gender.
The team also examined the impact of factors such as intensity of care, the relationship between caregivers and recipients or full-time employment. “Surprisingly, these factors had little influence on the overall decline in well-being, suggesting that caregivers face similar challenges in different settings.”, note the authors in their press release.
Access to care must be improved to help caregivers
The researchers point out that their results do not apply to everyone, because the experiences remain individual experiences after all. Thus some caregivers can derive pleasure from this experience, for example appreciating having a goal.
But for the team, this work confirms that supporting a sick loved one is, on the whole, trying for caregivers.
“Women appear to be particularly vulnerable, probably because they tend to take on more intensive responsibilities for close family members”add the researchers.
Thus, for them, their results underline “the need for policies that reduce reliance on informal care, such as improving access to professional long-term care or blended care solutions that could mitigate negative effects on caregivers.”
