Tydsperspektief as potensiële psigofortigene konstruk by die rouproses van versorgers van Alzeimer-pasiënte

[摘要] English: The passing away of a spouse is regarded as one of the most traumatic experiencesany individual can encounter. The successful management of this loss, and theprocess of regaining psychological well-being places a big demand on the survivingspouse. When this event befalls an elderly person, which is often the case, thesituation presents the spouse with unique challenges. From a prior study (Potgieter,2000) focusing on the psychological needs of Alzheimer caregivers, it became clearthat the presence of Alzheimer's disease adds additional, and often complicatingfactors to dealing with this experience of loss.The first objective of this study was to describe, as clearly as possible, the experiencesof Alzheimer-caregivers while facing the challenges presented by this unique grievingprocess. Secondly attention was given, from a psychofortigenic perspective, to thepotential role that the caregiver's future time perspective might play in the caregiver'ssuccessful handling of this grieving process.This survey focused on female spouses who served as caregivers after a diagnosis ofAlzheimer's Disease was confirmed in their marital partners. Through the use of bothquantitative and qualitative means of data analysis, the experiences of 20 caregiverswere compared with a control group consisting of ladies from more or Jess the sameage group. During the quantitative survey, it was expected of each of the 40 respondents to complete four questionnaires. Respondents' life satisfaction wasdetermined by means of the Satisfaction with Life Scale (Diener, Emmonds, Larsen &Griffin, 1985). The Sense of Coherence Questionnaire (Antonovsky, 1987) and theFortitude Questionnaire (Pretorius, 1998) were administered as a means ofdetermining the level of psychological health or strength of respondents. By means ofthe Adult Dispositional Hope Scale (Snyder, 2000), also called the 'Goals Scale', theinter-group differences in respondents' levels op hope were identified. The mainfocus of this study was, however, of a qualitative nature. Individual interviews with20 of the respondents, as well as material from personal diaries that were madeavailable by some of the ladies and were analysed, shed some light on the exact natureof the caregivers' experiences of the accompanying grieving process. As part of thequalitative survey, the SELE-instrument (Westerhof & Bode, 1999) was used todetermine the time perspectives of the individual respondents.As suggested by a prior study, the occurrence of a unique grieving process amongstcaregivers of Alzheimer patients was confirmed and described in detail. It was alsoclear that both the time perspective and the psychological well-being of caregiverswere adversely affected by this grieving process. Results showed that both a directand indirect (through intervening variables) link exists between the time perspectiveand psychological well-being of these elderly caregivers. This result confirmed thepotential role that future time perspective might play as a psychofortigenic factorduring this and similar caregiving situations. If the identified factors were built into asupport program, they could prove to be invaluable in protecting the psychologicalwell-being of caregivers, both during and after the caregiving process.

[发布机构] University of the Free State