Caregiver mental health and racial/ethnic disparities in stroke: implications for culturally sensitive interventions

The purpose of this study was to create a set of culturally sensitive mental-health-intervention recommendations for the caregivers of Latino/Puerto-Rican, Black, and White individuals with stroke. The study examined whether the mental health of stroke caregivers and functioning of individuals with stroke differed according to race/ethnicity, changed differentially over time according to race/ethnicity, and showed relationships between the two sets of constructs that differed according to race/ethnicity.

Data on caregiver mental health and functioning of individuals with stroke were collected from 124 (n = 248) White, Black, and Latino/Puerto-Rican dyads at 1, 6, and 12 months post-hospital discharge.

Out of the three racial/ethnic groups, Latino/Puerto-Rican individuals with stroke showed the lowest functioning, and their caregivers showed the poorest mental health, though the mental-health effects did not reach statistical significance. Consistent patterns which differed as a function of race/ethnicity emerged over time in the relationships between caregiver mental health and functioning of individuals with stroke.

Critical knowledge may be lost regarding the connections between caregiver mental health and the functioning of individuals with stroke when researchers and clinicians look only across race/ethnicity as opposed to also within. A monolithic racial/ethnic approach to mental-health interventions for stroke rehabilitation is likely limited, and race/ethnicity may affect how caregiver mental health and functioning of individuals with stroke reciprocally influence each other.