The prospective role of defeat and entrapment in caregiver burden and depression amongst formal caregivers

•Defeat and entrapment predict caregiver burden and depression 12 months later.•Defeat and entrapment partially account for the relationship between depression and burden.•Implications for improving education and training about mental health for healthcare staff.

The mental and physical demands of working in a care home are known to lead to elevated risk for staff of work and stress related illnesses such as depression. However, little is known about how these develop. Recent developments in defeat and entrapment research have demonstrated that they are best conceptualised as a single factor. Our aim was to establish whether combined defeat and entrapment influences the development of depression and caregiver burden amongst health care staff. Formal care staff (N = 195) were recruited from a care organisation and completed self-report measures of caregiver burden, depression, defeat and entrapment at two time points approximately 12 months apart. Regression analyses demonstrated that changes in caregiver burden and depression between Time 1 and Time 2 were predicted from baseline levels of combined defeat and entrapment. This research provided the first evidence of a link between defeat, entrapment and caregiver burden and depression in care staff. There are implications for improving education and training within care organisations about caregiver burden to help identify individuals at risk of developing illnesses.