“Oh boy, I urgently need a squirrel to unwind.”
Zambrano also associates other factors such as little or no control over the adverse situation, social interest, gender, personality pattern or increased emotional demands.
The caregiver stress syndrome (CSS) is a disorder that occurs in people who play the role of primary caregiver for a dependent person. It is characterised by physical and psychological exhaustion.
It occurs when people have to face new situations for which they are not prepared, and which consumes all their time and energy, when continuous stress (not a one-off situation) in a daily struggle against an illness, exhausts the caregiver physically and mentally.
Caregivers have higher levels of stress, they have little time to devote to their work, other family members or friends, and they can become overwhelmed by the attention and assistance required by the person under care.
According to the transactional or interactional conceptualisation of stress by Lazarus and Folkman (1984):
“Stress is a dynamic process of interaction between the subject and the environment, where both the subject’s evaluation of the stressful event and the strategies available to the subject to cope with it are decisive..
The effects of caring for an elderly dependent relative would thus be strongly influenced by the caregivers’ evaluations of the situation and by the resources available to cope with it.
Consequently, it is more than obvious that caregivers’ health must be regarded as a priority, in order to foster their wellbeing, so that they can develop their task of caring for dependent people in a successful way.
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