Psychological burden in family caregivers of patients with advanced cancer at initiation of specialist inpatient palliative care

Table 4 Multivariate logistic regression analyses for moderate to severe depressive and anxiety symptom levels

	ß	SE	OR (95% CI)	p
Moderate/severe anxiety symptoms ^a
Family caregiver’s gender
Male	Ref.
Female	.926	.392	2.525 (1.171–5.445)	.018
Relationship to the patient
Spouse/partner	.998	.395	2.714 (1.251–5.890)	.012
Other	Ref.
Family caregiver’s exhaustion
Yes	2.329	.582	10.267 (3.284–32.099)	<.001
No	Ref.
Palliative care outcome (IPOS) - Total score	.081	.027	1.084 (1.303–1.147)	.003
Moderate/severe depressive symptoms ^b
Family caregiver’s gender
Male	Ref.
female	1.195	.428	3.302 (1.429–7.634)	.005
Socio-economic status
Low	1.913	.589	6.772 (2.134–21.493)	.001
Middle	.196	.427	1.217 (.527–2.811)	.646
High	Ref.
Social support
Poor/moderate	.688	.397	1.989 (.914–4.327)	.083
Strong	Ref.
Care situation prior admission to SIPC ward
At home	−.920	.390	.399 (.186–.856)	.018
Other	Ref.
Family caregiver’s exhaustion
Yes	1.121	.561	3.068 (1.022–9.206)	.046
No	Ref.
Family caregiver’s sleep disturbances
Yes	1.431	.510	4.183 (1.541–11.358)	.005
No	Ref.
Palliative care outcome (IPOS) - Total score	.095	1.524	1.100 (1.039–1.164)	.001

Abbreviations: ß unstandardized regression coefficient, SE standard error, OR odds ratio for independent variables, CI 95% confidence interval, p probability of type I error, Ref. Reference group, SIPC specialist inpatient palliative care, IPOS Integrated Palliative Care Outcome Scale
^aReference group: none to mild anxiety symptoms (GAD-7 < 10); due to missing values, 168 out of 232 family caregivers were included into the final regression model; potentially associated factors included in the regression model at step 1: gender, household net income, relationship to the patient, social support, exhaustion, sleep disturbances, IPOS total score; tolerance values between .790 and .976
^bReference group: none to mild depressive symptoms (PHQ-9 < 10); due to missing values, 174 out of 232 family caregivers were included into the final regression model; potentially associated factors included in the regression model at step 1: age groups, gender, socio-economic status, social support, care situation prior admission to SIPC ward, exhaustion, sleep disturbances, IPOS total score; tolerance values between .769 and .971
Factors significantly associated with the outcome variable are marked in bold

ISSN: 1472-684X