Help-seeking by older husbands caring for wives with dementia.
OBJECTIVE
This paper reports a study to gain understanding of the help-seeking process of older husbands caring for wives with dementia.


BACKGROUND
Men comprise 41% of spousal caregivers. However, few reports describe older husbands' caregiving experiences and none specifically explore help-seeking in men caring for wives with dementia.


METHODS
A grounded theory design was used to discover a theory of help-seeking by older caregiver husbands. Audiotaped interviews were conducted during 2004 and 2005 with nine husband participants. The interviews were analysed by a research group to discover the core category and the relationships of related categories to develop a theory of help-seeking that was grounded in the data. Margaret Newman's theory of Health as Expanding Conscious provided a theoretical perspective for interpretation of the findings.


RESULTS
The core category, 'Doing the best I can', was preceded by the antecedent of 'changing patterns'. Husbands made choices to use action/interaction strategies of 'Relinquishing', 'Reaching out' and 'Shouldering' which were influenced by a variety of internal, relational, situational, and experiential facilitating or hindering intervening conditions. The consequence of help-seeking process was 'Continuing on', which had categories of: 'Keeping at home', 'Staying together', and 'Taking care of myself'.


CONCLUSIONS
Help-seeking by older husband caregivers is complex and gender-specific. Interventions to assist these caregivers must also be gender-specific and complement already existing help-seeking patterns. Focusing on helping caregivers to discover their patterns of relating and help-seeking empowers them to find new ways of interacting and to discover possibilities for action.
Brown
Janet Witucki
JW
The University of Tennessee College of Nursing, Knoxville, Tennessee, USA. jwitucki@utk.edu
Chen
Shu-li
SL
Mitchell
Carolyn
C
Province
Amy
A
D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D017028:Caregivers / Q000523:psychology*; D003704:Dementia / Q000451:nursing*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011368:Professional-Family Relations; D011582:Psychological Theory; D012944:Social Support; D018454:Spouses / Q000523:psychology*; D014481:United States