Abstract
Objectives:
To explore the socioeconomic, demographic and psychosocial factors associated with cognitive performance in elderly caregivers from Brazil.
Methods:
We evaluated 351 Brazilian elderly caregivers attending primary healthcare services regarding sociodemographic and care variables. Addenbrooke's Cognitive Examination-Revised (ACE-R) domains of orientation/attention, memory, verbal fluency, language and visuospatial were used as dependent variables in the Tobit model.
Results:
Literacy and family income were positively associated with all ACE-R domains. Age, gender, time of care (days/week) were negatively associated with some cognitive domains. Moreover, receiving emotional help and the level of hope were positively associated with specific domains.
Discussion:
The results may be useful for planning interventions aimed at elderly caregivers in order to prevent deficits in the different cognitive domains.
Keywords:
Caregivers; cognition; health risk behaviors; primary health care