(PS14-49) The Perceived Burden of Caregiving Predicts Posttraumatic Stress and Grief Symptom Severity Post-bereavement

Symptoms of posttraumatic stress (PTS) and prolonged grief (PGS) are common responses to bereavement. Research on resilience factors for positive outcomes post-bereavement for caregivers lacks information about the amount of caregiving, the extent to which caregiving interferes with one’s life, loss of caregiving-derived meaning, and PTS and PGS. Data was collected in an online cross-sectional survey of 781 bereaved adults (56.5% female, Mage = 39.4 years) via Amazon MTurk. To account for the heterogeneity in bereavement responses, a latent class analysis (LCA) was conducted to identify PTS and PGS symptom profiles with weekly hours spent caregiving, amount of interference with usual activities, and amount of meaning derived from caregiving and as covariates. A five-class solution yielded the best model fit, with a resilient class (32%), a high symptoms class (17%), moderate symptoms class (20%), predominantly trauma class (11%), and predominantly grief class (20%). Using the resilient class as a reference group, more hours spent caregiving and more meaning derived from caregiving were associated with an increased probability of higher symptom class membership. However, increases in life interference from caregiving was associated with a decreased likelihood of higher symptom class membership. Understanding the heterogeneity in symptom presentation and risk faced by caregivers is critical for the development and delivery of bereavement-related interventions.