Abstract
Objective
To examine the system of connections among traumatic brain injury (TBI) patient social
functioning, family functioning, and caregiver depression and burden in Mexico.
Design
Cross-sectional survey.
Setting
A public medical facility.
Participants
Mexican TBI patient-caregiver dyads (N=84) participated in this study. Most of the
patients with TBI were men (81%), with an average age ± SD of 38.83±13.44 years. The
majority of caregivers (86%) were women, with an average age ± SD of 51.74±11.29.
Intervention
Not applicable.
Main Outcome Measures
Outcomes assessed included family functioning (Family Satisfaction Scale), patient
social functioning (Medical Outcomes Study 36-Item Short-Form Health Survey), and
caregiver mental health (Patient Health Questionnaire-9 and Zarit Burden Interview).
Results
A moderated mediation path model found that patient social functioning and family
functioning predicted caregiver burden, and caregiver burden mediated the effect of
family functioning on caregiver depression. Caregivers with strong family functioning
tended to have low burden, no matter the level of patient social functioning. This
path model provided an excellent fit and explained 47% of the variance in caregiver
burden and 36% of the variance in caregiver depression.
Conclusions
In Mexico, strong family functioning is an important buffer in the relationship between
TBI patient social functioning deficits and caregiver mental health, especially because
familism is a core value in Latino culture. Rehabilitation interventions designed
to strengthen family functioning may improve caregiver mental health, thereby influencing
the quality of informal care that caregivers are able to provide.
Keywords
List of abbreviations:
CFI (comparative fit analysis), FSS (Family Satisfaction Scale), IQR (interquartile range), RMSEA (root mean square error of approximation), SF-36 (Medical Outcomes Study 36-Item Short-Form Health Survey), TBI (traumatic brain injury), ZBI (Zarit Burden Interview)To read this article in full you will need to make a payment
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: September 03, 2012
Footnotes
No commercial party having a direct financial interest in the results of the research supporting this article has or will confer a benefit on the authors or on any organization with which the authors are associated.
Identification
Copyright
© 2013 American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
