This preliminary research explores the relationships between caregiver stress, self-care, and overall quality of life (QOL) in adult informal caregivers providing care for veterans with dementia. Demographic and care-related factors were also described, and investigated as potential risk/protective factors for caregiver stress. Results indicated that both caregiver stress and self-care were significant predictors of overall QOL (p ≤ .001). Interestingly, no relationship was found between caregiver stress and self-care.
Many demographic and care-related differences were found between the study sample and a nationally representative sample of caregivers, suggesting the experiences and circumstances of the study population, and therefore the best interventions for the study population, may be meaningfully different. The only demographic or care-related factor to achieve statistical significance with regards to levels of stress or self-care was hours of care provided per week. Notably, all of these factors demonstrated large effect sizes. Though the small sample size makes generalizability somewhat difficult, these results indicate that caregiver self-care may be a target domain for interventions designed to improve QOL.