Mental and physical health of caregiving spouses: development of a causal model.

This study modeled the causal relationship between physical health and depression among a sample of 315 people providing home care for a spouse who had been diagnosed as having Alzheimer's disease. In addition to significant stability paths and correlations among variables at any one point in time, significant lagged paths were found in which depression (1) predicted physical health (2), depression (2) predicted physical health (3), and depression (1) predicted burden (2). Contrasting the overall model for husband and wife caregivers over a 6-month period indicated that the model was significant for wives but not for husbands.