• Kazushi Okamoto, Yumiko Momose, Ayumi Fujino, and Yukari Osawa.
• Department of Public Health, Aichi Prefectural College of Nursing and Health, Togoku, Kamishidami, Moriyama-ku, Nagoya 463-8502, Japan. okamoto@aichi-nurs.ac.jp
• Arch Gerontol Geriatr. 2009 Jan 1; 48 (1): 10-3.

AbstractThe aim of this study is to determine the relationship between life worth living and caregiver burden among caregivers in Japan. We used 111 caregivers of frail elders who completed a self-administered questionnaire including the 8 items developed by Arai et al. (J-ZBI) used as a scale to measure subjective burdens and psychological factors used as covariates other than life worth living. Total score (0-32) of the J-ZBI was dichotomized into "high burden" (> or =21 points) and "low burden" (<21 points). Multivariate logistic regression analysis revealed that only life worth living was significantly associated with caregiver burden. The direct effect of life worth living on caregiver burden (92.9%) was much greater than the indirect effect (7.1%). Our findings suggest that the increase of the sense of life worth living may play an important role in the prevention of the development of caregiver burden.

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