Family Caregiver’s Positive, Negative, and Ambivalent Feelings Towards Stroke Survivors: Association with Psychological Well-Being

Abstract

Ambivalence is the simultaneous experience of positive and negative feelings toward a specific person. Recent research suggested ambivalence is negatively associated with psychological well-being, and this association was mainly driven by negative feelings and not affected by the presence of positive feelings. This paper questioned the assumption and aimed to examine the relationship between caregiving ambivalence and psychological well-being, by disaggregating the positive and negative components of ambivalence. The study comprised data from a cross-sectional questionnaire survey with 190 family caregivers of stroke survivors (56 ± 14.3 years old; 70% female) in Hong Kong. The positive feelings and negative feelings towards a care recipient were separately measured, and these two composite scores were used to create an indirect measure of ambivalence. Psychological well-being was measured by caregivers’ positive role appraisals and depressive symptoms. Hierarchical multiple regression showed that the positive feeling was associated with positive aspects of caregiving (β = 0.54, p < 0.001) whereas negative feeling was associated with depressive symptoms (β = 0.61, p < 0.001). There was no positive X negative interaction on depressive symptoms and positive aspects of caregiving. The indirect measure of ambivalence only associated with depressive symptoms (β = 0.75, p < 0.001). Findings indicate the association between caregiving ambivalence and psychological well-being is varied by dominating valence as well as the method to combine the effects of positive and negative feelings. The positive and negative feelings associated with corresponding dimensions of psychological well-being but not to the opposite-valence outcomes. The indirect measure of ambivalence mainly reflects its negative component.