Relationship between frailty, caregiver burden, and depressive symptoms among family caregivers of community-dwelling older adults with frailty: the roles of mastery, competence, and coping styles.

Objective

To investigate how the three frailty dimensions and caregiver burden impacted depressive symptoms among family caregivers of community-dwelling older adults with frailty via mastery and competence and the moderating role of coping.

Methods

This cross-sectional study involved 464 caregivers of older adults with frailty from different regions in China. The moderated-mediation model was examined through path analysis using AMOS 28.0.

Results

Mastery mediated the relationship between physical frailty and depressive symptoms, and competence mediated the relationship between psychological frailty and depressive symptoms. Positive coping had a moderating role between physical frailty and mastery and between psychological frailty and competence. Positive coping also moderated the mediated pathway from physical frailty to depressive symptoms via mastery, and the mediated pathway from psychological frailty to depressive symptoms via competence. Negative coping showed a moderating effect between social frailty and depressive symptoms. Caregiver burden did not exhibit significant influence within the care-related stress process.

Conclusions

Positive coping may alleviate the detrimental impact of physical frailty and psychological frailty on caregivers' depressive symptoms through enhancing mastery and competence among caregivers of older adults with frailty, respectively. Contrarily, negative coping may aggravate the adverse impact of social frailty on depressive symptoms. Future interventions should increase caregivers' mastery and competence, as well as promote positive coping, and reduce negative coping to improve caregivers' mental health.