Early Caregiver Experiences, Optimism, and Mental Health: Former Young Caregivers and Emerging Adult Caregivers

INTRODUCTIONThe caregiver role can occur at any part of the lifespan, and the effects, both short and long-term, on one's mental health are important to understand (Shifren, 2009; Schulz & Sherwood, 2008). From the more than 65 million adult caregivers in the United States (U.S.; The National Alliance for Caregiving and AARP, 2009), researchers have found that a number of factors including age, personality, social support, stressors, coping techniques, and disease severity may play a role in caregivers' mental health for a variety of diseases and disorders (Auon, Bentley, Funk, Toye, Grande & Stajduhar, 2012; Chien et al., 2011; Marquez, Bustamante, Kozey-Keadle, Kraemer, & Carrion, 2012; Oliver, Washington, Demiris, Wittenberg-Lyles & Novak, 2012; Pinquart & Duberstein, 2005; Schulz & Sherwood, 2008). For the 1.3 to 1.4 million young caregivers in the U.S. who experience this role in childhood and/or adolescence (Hunt, Levine & Naiditch, 2005), there is still little information on the effects of early caregiving on their emerging adult mental health. Understanding the mental health of former young caregivers once they reach emerging adulthood is important. Individuals who reach emerging adulthood (18 to 29 years old, Arnett, 2007) may have depressive symptoms that could be diagnosed as depression (Rohde, Lewinsohn, Klein, Seeley & Gau, 2013), even without the experiences of being an early caregiver. In fact, the first-incidence rates of depression for non-caregivers could be as high in emerging adulthood as in adolescence, especially for women (Nolen-Hoeksema & Girgus, 1994; Rohde et al., 2013). Researchers have found that between 20 to 33% of people with depression report that it started before age 21 (Arya, Montero-Marin, Baroilhet, Fritsch, & Montgomery, 2013). When one adds on a factor such as caregiver experiences from childhood, adolescence, and/or emerging adulthood, it could be presumed that this would exacerbate the presence of depressive symptoms (Dellmann-Jenkins & Blankemeyer, 2009; Dellmann-Jenkins, Blankemeyer & Pinkard, 2001) unless these are particularly resilient youth (Zolkoski & Bullock, 2012). Though there is a need to assess the mental health of former young caregivers once they reach emerging adulthood, there is little research currently available on this topic. One study was conducted on former young caregivers (defined as those providing hands on care to a parent or adult relative when under 21 years old) that included assessment of positive and negative mental health (Shifren & Kachorek, 2003). These researchers found that former young caregivers reported more positive than negative mental health in adulthood. However, over 40% of their sample had scores on the Center for Epidemiological Studies-Depression measure that could indicate depressive symptomatology.Most of the information obtained on early caregiving experiences has been on the current experiences of child and adolescent caregivers. For example, becoming a young caregiver can affect the developmental experiences of children and adolescents (Mechling, 2011; Miller, 2012; Shifren, 2009). Researchers have found that caregiving in childhood may lead to difficulties in their development (Becker, 2007), and early caregiving roles can put children in more socially isolated situations than children from a non-caregiving environment (Lakey & Gates, 2001; Pakenham, Bursnall, Chiu, Cannon & Okochi, 2006; Siskowski, 2006). However, healthy relationships between parents and their children may help young caregivers have more positive experiences as caregivers (Dellmann-Jenkins et al., 2001; Pakenham et al., 2006; Shifren, 2009). In terms of current mental health of child and/or adolescent caregivers, researchers report that child and adolescent caregivers are susceptible to developing mental health problems at a high rate (75%; Frank, Tatum & Tucker, 1999). …