Caregivers and their Cultural Embededness- A Phenomenological understanding of Caregiving Experience

Caregiving has been usually understood in terms of economic burden, and quality of life, while the inevitable role of culture and its influence in care delivery system remains overlooked. The current paper captures the power of shared beliefs, customs and values in shaping one’s actions and reactions, when prescribed the role of a caregiver. For this purpose, extensive review with regard to gender roles, family structures, family cohesiveness, power hierarchies and relevance of spiritual beliefs has been examined and compared across different cultures. Furthermore, due to paucity of cultural accounts of caregiving process, from Indian perspective, primary data, in the form of narrative accounts was gathered. The narratives acquired were of, seven family members acting as caregivers to a patient with Parkinson’s disease for three years and more. The data was analyzed using Existential phenomenology, focusing on existential givens of temporality, spatiality, co-existence, and mortality. Few themes emerged were, shouldering responsibilities and dissonance between cultural and personal narrative. These shed light on their moral dilemmas, sense of estrangement from self, relational alienation reinforced by the culture and a deeper sense of inconsistency and meaninglessness. These findings can be utilized for developing an intervention model for providing comprehensive care to the caregivers, which relooks at, as well as utilizes their sense of meaning–making in enhancement of their mental health.