Prevalence and Association Factors of Stress & Depression of Palliative-Patient Caregivers, in NANOI Community Hospital Catchment Area, NAN Province.

Abstract

     This is a cross-sectional analytic study to determine the prevalence and factors associated with stress and depression that causes palliative-patient caregivers, in the Na-noi hospitals catchment area. The sample are the main caregiver of the 9 diseases of palliative-patient. Data collection by interview, the tool is general information questionnaire, stress assessment (ST-5), 2 questions for depression screening (2Q) and 9 risk assessment of depression (9Q). The study found 88.7 percent of samples were stressful, with a slight strain of stress found 68.6 percent, with moderate stress found 15.3 percent, with severe stress and the most stressful found 4.0 percent and 0.8 percent, respectively. Factors associated stress of caregiver have shown that the loss of social opportunities, declining income, patient's disease, and having a sometime of co-caregiver are statistically significantly more stress-causing factors. The factors that have a very stress-induced effect (ST-5 scores over 4) are the caregivers who care for elderly patients with dementia has the highest average stress score, the second is a statistically significant increase in caregiver income. People earning between 10,000-15,000 Baht per month had the highest prevalence of depression, 33.3 percent of those earning more than 15,000 Baht per month with 25 percent of depression, while those earning between 5,000-10,000 and less than 5,000 Baht per month were found to have depression of just 6.1 percent and 2.8 percent, respectively. Comparisons within each group of factors showed that the stress scores of elderly patient-caregivers are higher than, and statistically significant, the patient's caregiver of end-stage kidney disease, end-stage pulmonary diseases. Income-loss factors showed that those with incomes fell 25-50 percent with the highest stress scores and higher than those whose incomes did not decrease at all statistically significant. Co-caregiver factor found that having some other caregivers involved some time had statistically significantly higher stress and higher than having multiple co-caregivers. And found that the loss of opportunities to participate in social activities had statistically significant of higher stress scores.