Acquired brain injury (ABI) is associated with many physical and psychiatric conditions. Oftentimes, the individual’s family members are... Show moreAcquired brain injury (ABI) is associated with many physical and psychiatric conditions. Oftentimes, the individual’s family members are responsible for providing long-term care, leaving caregivers vulnerable to negative effects of caregiving including stress, physical, and psychological problems. Attribution theory suggests that when individuals experience distress, they may generate causal explanations for their circumstances by attributing blame regarding why the event happened. Frequently, blame attributions involve identifying the problem as being within another person. The objective of this study was to investigate caregiver coping strategies as possible mediators between caregiver family member blame and caregiver psychosocial outcomes among caregivers of individuals with ABI. Caregivers of individuals with ABI (n = 94) completed a brief online survey of self-report measures regarding coping (emotion-focused, problemfocused, and dysfunctional strategies), blame (direct, indirect, and preoccupation with blame), depressive symptoms, and quality of life (QOL). Bootstrapping mediation analyses were then conducted to investigate the mediating role of caregiver coping strategy between blame attributions, and either depressive symptoms or QOL. Results demonstrated that the use of more dysfunctional coping strategies significantly mediated the relationship between indirectly blaming one’s family member for their injury and subsequent depressive symptoms and QOL. Furthermore, using more dysfunctional coping strategies also significantly mediated the relationship between preoccupation with blame and depressive symptoms. Implications for intervention and future research are discussed. M.S. in Psychology, May 2015 Show less
