Article Text
Abstract
Background There is evidence that unpaid caregiving can have negative effects on the mental health of female caregivers; however, evidence of impacts on male caregivers is limited. This study addressed this gap by examining associations between becoming a caregiver and depressive symptoms among men.
Methods We used data from waves 1–2 (2013, 2016) of the Longitudinal Study of Australian Male Health (Ten to Men). Effects of incident caregiving on depressive symptoms were estimated using augmented inverse probability treatment weighting, with adjustment for potential confounders. Incident caregiving was assessed as a binary variable (became a caregiver vs not), and depressive symptoms were measured using the Patient Health Questionnaire (moderate to severe depressive symptoms; yes, no). Main analysis was prospective, drawing on wave 1 (caregiving) and wave 2 (depressive symptoms), and sensitivity analyses modelled cross-sectional associations.
Results In the main analysis, incident caregiving in wave 1 was associated with depressive symptoms in the subsequent wave, with an average treatment effect of 0.11 (95% CI 0.06, 0.17) and equating to a risk ratio of 2.03 (95% CI 1.55, 2.51). Associations were robust to several sensitivity analyses, with cross-sectional associations supporting the main prospective analyses.
Conclusion These results provide evidence of the association between caregiving and depressive symptoms among male caregivers. This has important implications for policy and support programmes. As we seek to shift caregiving responsibilities toward a more gender-equal distribution of care, policy must recognise that, like female caregivers, male caregivers also experience mental health impacts related to their caregiving role.
- EPIDEMIOLOGY
- Health inequalities
- LONGITUDINAL STUDIES
- MENTAL HEALTH
Data availability statement
Data may be obtained from a third party and are not publicly available. The data that support the findings of this study are available from Dataverse, managed by the Australian Data Archive. Restrictions apply to the availability of these data, and interested users may apply for data from https://dataverse.ada.edu.au/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.26193/VTCZFF.
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Data availability statement
Data may be obtained from a third party and are not publicly available. The data that support the findings of this study are available from Dataverse, managed by the Australian Data Archive. Restrictions apply to the availability of these data, and interested users may apply for data from https://dataverse.ada.edu.au/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.26193/VTCZFF.
Footnotes
Contributors TLK acquired the funding, conceived the study, carried out the analysis and wrote the paper. YT, HM and PV contributed to analytical design, interpretation of findings, and review and revision of drafts. All authors approved the final version of the manuscript. TLK is the guarantor for this work.
Funding This work was supported by the Australian Research Council (TLK: DE200100607).
Competing interests None declared.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.
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