Associations of Caretaking with Internalizing Symptoms in Offspring of Huntington's Disease Patients

Abstract

This study examines Huntington’s Disease in the context of patients and their children. Huntington’s Disease is a progressive, autosomal dominant, neurodegenerative disorder, meaning that children of parents with the disease have a 50% chance of having the disease themselves. The children have a unique role in taking care of their parents physically and emotionally throughout their parent’s disease progression. The purpose of this study is to examine the associations among caregiving, offspring and patient characteristics, and internalizing behavior problems in offspring of Huntington’s Disease patients. Caregiving behaviors were negatively associated with internalizing behaviors in offspring of Huntington’s Disease patients. Patient emotional well-being was found to be negatively correlated with offspring internalizing symptoms. Patient CAP scores and offspring age were positively correlated with caretaking behaviors. Implications of the findings and future directions for research are explored.