Abstract

DOMINGUEZ GUEDEA, Miriam Teresa; OCEJO GARCIA, Abraham  and  RIVERA SANDER, Martín Alfonso. Well-being, Social Support and Family Context in Caregivers of Older Adults. Acta de investigación psicol [online]. 2013, vol.3, n.1, pp.1018-1030. ISSN 2007-4719.

Objective: to explore the perception of social support as a mediator of the influence from a problematic family context on the well-being of family caregivers of functionally dependent older adults. Method: a non-probabilistic sample of 464 family caregivers participated by answering a psychometric instrument that was previously validated for the population of reference. Results: a series of confirmatory factor analyses indicated the fit of observed variables to represent the constructs of subjective well-being, perception of social support and problematic family context. The case of caregivers who live with the dependent older adult, where the influence of the stressing family context on the caregiver's well-being is mediated by the caregiver's perception of social support was identified as the model with better fit after the review of four different models. Conclusions: this paper agrees with the buffer effect of social support documented in scientific literature, it also provides data to enrich the knowledge about the family and social circumstances associated to the Mexican family caregivers.

Keywords : Subjective well-being; Social suppor; Stress; Family caregivers; Older adults.