At another time we talked about the risks that caring for a chronically ill person can entail , and now we return to this topic by reviewing a publication that appeared in April 2015 in the scientific journal Memory . The article explains the findings of a study carried out with middle-aged women and mothers of children with autism spectrum disorders . This interesting work has been carried out by researchers from the Department of Psychology of the University of Valencia, in Spain.
When thinking in a general way about the living conditions of the mothers of these children, we can imagine that it is not an easy task to care for children with these types of disorders, and of course it is easy for a continuous stress response to occur. We know how damaging chronic stress is for health, and particularly for the hippocampus, a structure of the brain that is relevant to the proper functioning of memory.
The work of A. Romero and his collaborators compared the declarative memory capacity of a group of mothers of children with autism spectrum disorders called ‘caregivers’ with that of a group of ‘control’ women (non-caregivers). In addition, he assessed other important factors such as negative affect and testosterone levels , in relation to this continuous stress response.
The analyzes showed that the group of caregivers was more likely to confuse the material to remember (more interference from a list of words ‘to miss’ on a ‘good list’ to remember), which would indicate a worse functioning of memory. Also, they had worse affect and higher testosterone levels . Importantly, the more years of caring, the poorer the memory performance and the greater feelings of anger the caregivers had. On the other hand, high testosterone levels were associated with better memory to a point where too much hormone impaired performance on tasks.
These findings highlight once again the strong impact suffered by the health of caregivers of chronically ill patients , and above all how important it is to promote caregiver care. Stress management and mental exercise can be two ways to offset the negative effects of caring and help you a little to offset it.
Marisa Fernández is Senior Neuropsychologist at Unobrain
