Stress and Coping Strategies among Caregivers of Cancer Patients

Abstract

Caring for someone with a cancer can affect the dynamics of a family. It takes up most of the carers’ time and energy. Currently, for people, there are more than thirty million family caregivers providing assistance to their elderly parents, siblings and/or spouses who suffer from Cancer (Clint, 2000). The objective of the study is to assess the relationship between the level of stress, coping strategies and quality of life of care givers of cancer patients. The psychological well-being of care givers and the religious coping strategies employed is focused in this research. To assess the level of stress of the care givers, Kingston Care giver Stress Scale (Hopkins &Kilik, 2004) was used, brief COPE inventory (Carver, 1997) and RCOPE inventory (Pargament, 1997) was used. It is important for the mental health professionals to support the caregivers and provide interventions when most needed since they have a better understanding of the impact of stress and burden that individuals go through in an oncology setting.