An Appraisal of Burden of Stress among Family Caregivers of Dependent Elderly

Family caregivers have played an important role in our society for granting care to the aged. They are playing crucial role in our care system by providing a significant quantity of health and long-term care for the aged person, chronically ill and disabled. The act of care-giving is not an easy task and can become more tedious when one is caring for a family member who is solely depending on the primary caregiver for everything. This situation could be the reason for many challenges which can affect the quality of life of the primary caregivers. The present research has made an attempt to assess the burden of stress among the family caregivers across varying stages of adulthood who were primarily responsible for care of dependent elderly. The sample included 60 families of primary caregivers who were taking care of the dependent elderly in their family from the Ludhiana city. The Zarit Burden Interview developed by Zarit et al. (1980) was used to measure the burden of stress on caregivers. The results reflected a major proportion of primary caregivers experiencing severe level of stress along with statistically significant differences between primary caregivers of young and middle adulthood stage.