The Impact of Coping and Psychological Flexibility on Young Adult Caregivers' Mental Health and Quality of Life.

Abstract

As the emphasis on home-based care grows, it is important to understand factors that affect caregivers' quality of life (QOL). Despite the rise of caregiving responsibilities among all demographics, limited literature examines young adult caregivers. The purpose of this study was to 1) examine the difference in mental health (MH) and QOL among young adult caregivers (YAC) and non-caregivers (YANC) and 2) explore how coping and psychological inflexibility moderate the association of caregiver status with MH and QOL. 60 YAC and YANC (age 18-29) were matched via a one-to-one nearest-neighbor propensity score matching with a caliper of 0.1. Participants completed a questionnaire measuring depression and anxiety, QOL, psychological inflexibility, and coping. ANCOVA revealed YAC reported lower physical health-related QOL than YANC (η² = .09, p = .024) but there were no significant differences in depression, anxiety, or mental health-related QOL. Moderation analyses revealed avoidant coping was associated with worse depression, anxiety, and MH-related QOL among YANC (p's < .0001), but not YAC. Exploratory moderated mediation analyses revealed that for YANC, psychological inflexibility was associated with greater avoidant coping, which in turn was associated with worse depression, anxiety, and MH-related QOL; this indirect effect was not observed for YAC. In this study, YAC did not report significantly worse mental health than YANC, but did report poorer physical health-related QOL. Additionally, results suggest being a YAC may buffer the impact of avoidant coping on MH. Further studies are needed for a better understanding of the young adult caregiver experience. Trial Registration: This study was pre-registered on Open Science Framework ( https://osf.io/hcwqg/?view_only=d777b5061b724801914df6893a426aa4 ).