{"id":1100,"date":"2025-05-07T11:14:49","date_gmt":"2025-05-07T09:14:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.caregiving-tests.de\/?page_id=1100"},"modified":"2025-10-08T11:46:16","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T09:46:16","slug":"subjektive-pflegebelastung","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.caregiving-tests.de\/en\/subjektive-pflegebelastung\/","title":{"rendered":"Subjective Burden"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gr\u00e4\u00dfel and Adabbo (2011) defined informal caregiver burden<\/em><\/strong> as the subjective perception of stress that results from a domestic care situation. The extent to which a caregiver (CG) feels stressed varies from person to person. Subjective burden is associated with various effects: The greater the subjective burden of the CG, the greater the effects<\/strong>, namely, (a) psychological complaints, especially depression (e.g., del-Pino-Casado et al., 2019; del-Pino-Casado et al, 2021), (b) physical complaints, such as cardiovascular disease (Ahn et al., 2022), and (c) unfavorable behaviors of the CG toward the care-recipient (Boye & Yan, 2018), most frequently including verbal aggression (Storey, 2020). However, the risk that home care will have health consequences for CGs is also influenced by personality traits (e.g., neuroticism and optimism) and individual competence (e.g., perceiving oneself as competent in the care situation) (van der Lee et al., 2014).<\/p>\n

The operationalization of the concept of the subjective burden of the CG is based on two central models: the Caregiver Stress Model by Pearlin et al. (1990) and the Transactional Stress Model by Lazarus and Folkman (1984).<\/p>\n

The Caregiver Stress Model<\/strong> postulates five interrelated components of caregiver burden: socioeconomic factors (e.g., income, education), primary stressors (e.g., the subjective experience of disadvantage), secondary stressors (e.g., challenges in professional life arising from the caregiving situation), secondary intrapsychic stressors (e.g., conflicts between one\u2019s job and caregiving demands), and the general effects of caregiver burden (e.g., health consequences).<\/p>\n

By contrast, the Transactional Stress Model<\/strong> outlines the idea that stress depends on the CG\u2019s primary and secondary appraisals (i.e., cognitive processes). Thus, a CG\u2019s subjective burden depends on how the CG assesses the care situation (primary appraisal) and the extent to which they feel able to deal with this situation (secondary appraisal; see Graessel & Adabbo, 2011).<\/p>\n

The Burden Scale for Family Caregivers (BSFC)<\/strong> is an instrument for recording a CG\u2019s subjective burden. It was developed and validated for CGs, regardless of the cause of the need for care (e.g., stroke, cancer, rheumatism, dementia), regardless of the relationship of the CGs to the care-recipients (caregiving parent, caregiving partner, caregiving adult children, no degree of kinship), and also regardless of the intensity of the need for help (from light support to severe need for care). There is a long form of the BSFC, which has 28 items, and a short form called the BSFC-s, which has 10 items.<\/p>\n

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