Caregiver burden: changes over time and associations with anxiety and depression symptoms

Family caregivers commonly report high levels of burden, which is associated with risk for depression and anxiety. However, less is understood about how symptoms respond to changes in caregiver burden. This clinical-trial study assessed the influence of caregiver burden on anxiety and depression among informal caregivers on persons with Alzheimer's disease and related dementias.

U.S. caregivers (N = 139) self-reported caregiver burden, depression, and anxiety symptoms, up to 6 times over a twenty-week period. Multilevel models assessed concurrent and longitudinal effects of changes in caregiver burden on changes in depression and anxiety symptoms.

Caregivers who experienced increases in burden during a given month also reported increases in depression (b = 0.25, CI [0.19, 0.30]) and anxiety symptoms (b = 0.22, CI [0.16, 0.29]) that month, and had sustained increases in depression and anxiety symptoms one-month later (b=0.12, CI [0.07, 0.18]; b = 0.15, CI [0.08, 0.22]).

While worsening depression and anxiety symptoms that followed an increase in burden were modest in the context of a single month, reporting higher than typical burden for two or more months was related to clinically relevant shifts in the risk for depression and anxiety. Results indicate that interventions designed to reduce burden would likely benefit caregivers' mental health.