What is it about?
Dementia caregivers have high rates of depression and anxiety, which may be linked with the emotions they experience during caregiving. In this study, caregivers and care recipients had a conflict conversation in the lab, and caregivers reported the emotions they experienced during the conversation. We found that: (1) greater sadness was associated with higher depression; (2) greater fear was associated with higher anxiety; and (3) greater anger and lower calm were each associated with both higher depression and anxiety.
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Why is it important?
Our findings indicate that caregivers who experience greater sadness, greater fear, greater anger, and lower calm may be at risk for mental health problems. Future research should evaluate these specific emotions as possible intervention targets to improve caregiver mental health.
Perspectives
This article answers a question that might seem rather obvious: which specific emotions are associated with depression and anxiety (in dementia caregivers)? Our results confirm what would be expected: sadness is associated with depression and fear is associated with anxiety. But what's really interesting is that two new emotions emerge as predictors of depression and anxiety: calm and anger.
Jenna Wells
Cornell University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: The role of specific affects in the psychopathology of dementia family caregivers., Emotion, October 2025, American Psychological Association (APA),
DOI: 10.1037/emo0001592.
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