Personality and coping among caregivers of spouses with dementia.

Personality factors and coping strategies were examined among a sample of spouse caregivers. Fifty spouse caregivers of patients diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease or a related dementia completed the NEO-FFI, a personality inventory designed to measure traits identified in the five-factor trait model, and a revised measure of the Ways of Coping Checklist. Results from a series of multivariate regressions showed that personality traits explained 60% of the variance in emotion-focused coping, 30% of variance in problem-focused coping, and 15% of variance associated with social support coping. Discussion focuses on the usefulness of including personality characteristics of the caregiver in formulating models of the caregiving coping process.