Informal care provision for mental versus somatic disorders in the Netherlands: a cross-sectional investigation of caregiving context and quality of life outcomes

OBJECTIVES: To investigate to what extent informal caregivers of persons with a mental disorder and a somatic disorder compare, in terms of their caregiving context and quality of life measures. DESIGN: Cross-sectional analysis of an existing panel survey dataset. SETTING: The Netherlands, 2020. PARTICIPANTS: Informal caregivers that provided long-term care and support to a loved one with either a somatic disorder (n=428) or mental disorder (n=176). OUTCOME MEASURES: Self-assessed care-related, health-related and mental health-related quality of life and the caregiving context, including background and contextual factors of the informal caregiver and care recipient, caregiving strains and coping and support. RESULTS: A significant degree of variation was present among the two caregiving groups, in terms of their caregiving context. Notably, caregivers for individuals with mental disorders had a higher subjective burden (p<0.001), care recipient comorbidity (p<0.001), need for permanent surveillance (p=0.003) and total caregiving intensity (p<0.001). Significantly worse caregiver outcomes were reported for caregivers of individuals with mental disorders for care-related (p<0.001), health-related (p=0.011) and mental health-related quality of life (p<0.001). However, the presence of a mental disorder was only found to be significantly associated with worse care-related quality of life scores (B=-4.635, p=0.002). CONCLUSIONS: Our findings established that informal caregivers of individuals with mental disorders not only provide care and support in more burdensome caregiving contexts, but also suffer from a worse quality of life compared with informal caregivers of individuals with somatic disorders. Particularly, the impact on care-related quality of life was concerning, with the presence of a mental disorder in the care recipient found to be directly associated with a significantly worse outcome.