Supporters Need Support: An Exploratory Analysis of Support Marshaling Among Informal Dementia Care Partners

Abstract

Caring for someone with dementia is a challenging task, and informal dementia care partners (CPs) rely on their own sources of support to manage the demands they face. Investigating how CPs marshal support, or the ways they work to increase the positive support they receive while minimizing nonsupport, can illuminate how CPs communicate around their own supportive needs. Thematic analysis of 23 semi-structured interviews revealed that CPs marshal support using direct and indirect support marshaling strategies, that there are various successes and challenges inherent in CP support marshaling, and that CPs have unique ways to manage their support.

Keywords:

• social support
• support marshaling
• caregiving
• dementia
• social contextual theory

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Olivia Birg and Isabel Henry for their assistance with this research. We also wish to thank our participants for their involvement. We also thank Dementia Together and Cyndy Luzinski, in particular, for their invaluable support throughout the research process. Finally, we thank the anonymous reviewers for their feedback.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research received no external funding.

Notes on contributors

Michelle Matter

Michelle Matter (MA, Colorado State University) is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Communication Studies at Colorado State University.

Meara H. Faw

Meara H. Faw (PhD, University of Washington) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Colorado State University.