Taking care of older caregivers who lose control: The association between mastery and psychopathology.

Objective: In Europe there is a growing number of informal caregivers above 55 years of age, some of whom experience high levels of psychological distress. Our aim is to investigate the prevalence of psychological distress and its association with perceived mastery among elderly informal caregivers.

Methods: In a large representative random sample of citizens from four cities in the Netherlands, we compared psychological distress among older and younger informal caregivers.