Informal Cares and Caregivers in Rural Elderly: Emotional Costs in Public Health Policies

Background

The role of informal caregiver tends to be played by the closest family environment, with an eminently feminized profile¹, and characterized by the fact that it involves not receiving any kind of economic remuneration for the help they offer, while they are almost always invisible to the eyes of society (Wright, 1983). The informal caregiver eventually converts her home into a scenario of continuous health care, acquiring a role that has even in many cases an important objective burden referring to the functions and / or problems to be assumed and resolved; but to which must add an unmeasurable or subjective burden that refers to the emotional and/or sentimental impact derived from the strong affective-emotional bond that habitually unites the person being cared for; and on the other hand from the consequences that derive in the personal, social or labour sphere as a result of their new role (Hervás, Cabasés, & Forcén, 2007). A scenario that in most cases ends up assuming, in the words of García-Calvete, Mateo and Maroto (2004), a high cost for their own quality of life, something that in some of its determinants is completely unknown, and all in spite of the fact that the issue has been sufficiently addressed by scientific literature since the classic work of Schulz and Beach (1999) alerted about the concern of the problem when relating informal care with an increase in the risk of mortality