Grant: Master's Award: Canada Graduate Scholarships

Caregivers of mentally ill family members experience high levels of chronic stress, and are generally vulnerable to develop physical and mental health problems, including increased mortality rates. This process compromises caregivers' quality of life and leads to heightened strain on the Canadian health-care system. It is thus of critical importance to identify psychological mechanisms that enable caregivers to manage high levels of stress and protect their mental and physical health, while they continue to provide care to their family members. Optimism, a psychological construct defined by the general expectation for positive outcomes, has been shown to protect against psychological and physiological illness when under stress. While most of this research examined differences in stress between individuals, optimism may become particularly adaptive when individuals perceive higher-than-normal levels of stress. This phenomenon may be observed because individuals' health-relevant processes can habituate to chronically high levels of stress. The current research aims to test this hypothesis by measuring experiences of stress within and between individuals. It is hypothesized that optimism will protect caregivers from developing mental and physical illness particularly during periods of higher-than-usual levels of stress. The study is based on 3 waves of data collected over 4 years from 147 caregivers of mentally ill family members. The results are expected to identify new psychological mechanisms that can inform psychological treatments and interventions to reduce the adverse effects of stress on clinical disease.