The Impact of Dementia Caregiving on Caregiver Cognitive Health

Providing care for individuals with dementia (IWD) is associated with significant burden and negative health outcomes.While it is well-documented that caregiving has negative effects on physical and psychological health, relatively few studies have examined the cognitive impact of caring for IWD.In the present study, we sought to expand existing literature on caregiver stress and burden into the domain of cognitive functioning.We hypothesized that caregivers for IWD would demonstrate worse cognitive functioning and report lower perceived cognitive ability.We also explored whether physical and psychological health outcomes were related to cognitive outcomes of caregivers and controls.Other potential correlates of caregiver cognitive health outcomes were also examined.As expected, caregivers performed worse than their noncaregiving peers in memory, but not psychomotor processing speed.Caregivers and noncaregivers did not differ in perceived cognitive ability.Consistent with prior research, caregivers generally reported worse physical and psychological health.Correlates of poorer cognitive outcomes for caregivers included higher anxiety, more sleep disturbance, higher caregiver burden and more distress about neuropsychiatric symptoms in IWD.These correlates may help to identify caregivers who are at greatest risk for negative outcomes so that interventions can be targeted to buffer the negative impact of