Caregiver Perceived Stress, Anxiety, and Coping Strategies among Family Members of Patients with Chronic Illness (Diabetes)

Abstract

Family members often participate in the everyday management of diabetes, yet their psychological experience can remain less visible than the patient's clinical needs. This cross-sectional quantitative study examined perceived stress, anxiety, and coping strategies among 64 adult family caregivers of patients with diabetes. Perceived stress was assessed with the 10-item Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-10), anxiety with the 10-item anxiety measure actually administered in the study, and coping with 28 administered coping items scored according to the study questionnaire's specified problem-focused, emotion-focused, avoidant, additional, and overall composites. Descriptive statistics, Cronbach's alpha, Pearson correlations, Spearman sensitivity analyses, Holm-adjusted domain comparisons, and multiple regression with diagnostic and HC3 robust checks were used. Mean perceived stress was 20.66 (SD = 7.17); 59.4% of caregivers were classified in the moderate and 20.3% in the high perceived-stress category. Stress and anxiety were strongly positively related, r = .734, 95% CI [.596, .830], p < .001. Neither stress nor anxiety was significantly related to overall coping. At the domain level, however, stress and anxiety were positively associated with avoidant coping, and both associations remained significant after Holm correction. The exploratory regression predicting avoidant coping explained 30.1% of its variance; perceived stress retained a significant unique association under HC3 robust inference. The findings indicate that caregiver distress was related more clearly to coping strategy than to an undifferentiated amount of coping. Because the sample was recruited by convenience and measured at one time point, the results do not establish prevalence or causal direction. Caregiver assessment in diabetes services may benefit from attention to stress, anxiety, and persistent avoidance while remaining sensitive to the practical and social conditions in which coping occurs