Research Article Structural Equation Modeling of Parkinson’s Caregiver Social Support, Resilience, and Mental Health: A Strength- Based Perspective Carmen M. Tyler, 1 Richard S. Henry, 1 Paul B. Perrin , 1,2 Jack Watson, 1 Teresita Villaseñor, 3,4 Sarah K. Lageman , 5 Erin R. Smith , 1 Genoveva Rizo Curiel, 4 Judith Avila, 4 Miriam E. Jimenez Maldonado, 3,4 and Jose A. Soto-Escageda 4 1 Department of Psychology, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, USA 2 Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, USA 3 Hospital Civil Fray Antonio Alcalde, Guadalajara, Mexico 4 Department of Neurosciences, University of Guadalajara, Guadalajara, Mexico 5 Department of Neurology, Parkinson’s & Movement Disorders Center, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, USA Correspondence should be addressed to Paul B. Perrin; pperrin@vcu.edu Received 26 November 2019; Revised 14 January 2020; Accepted 21 January 2020; Published 14 February 2020 Academic Editor: Jeff Bronstein Copyright © 2020 Carmen M. Tyler et al. is is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Only scant literature has focused on social support in Parkinson’s disease (PD) caregivers, and no studies to date have examined resilience in this population, despite both variables having been shown to be important in other caregiving populations. As a result, the purpose of the current study was to construct and validate a theoretical structural equation model whereby social support is associated with higher levels of resilience in PD caregivers and increased resilience is related to decreased mental health symptoms. Two hundred fifty three PD caregivers from two clinics in the United States and Mexico completed self-report measures of these constructs. Results suggested that the hypothesized pattern was robustly supported with the structural equation model showing generally good fit indices. Higher levels of social support were associated with increased resilience, which in turn was associated with reduced mental health symptoms. Resilience partially mediated social support’s effect on mitigating mental health symptoms. e model explained 11% of the variance in resilience and 35% in mental health symptoms. ese findings have implications for future research on the development and tailoring of interventions to improve social support, resilience, and mental health in PD caregivers. 1.Introduction Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disorder that gradually erodes a person’s motor and cognitive functions, resulting in increasing disability; PD trails only Alzheimer’s disease in neurodegenerative disorder occur- rence, and risk for developing PD increases with age [1]. As people are living longer, the proportion of older people in global populations is increasing and rates of those who will develop PD are expected to rise accordingly [2], with incidence rates similar across the Americas [3]. Continued progression of PD requires increasing levels of assistance from others for the individual with Parkinson’s disease (IWPD) [4], with caregiving responsibilities usually being undertaken by informal caregivers, often aging spouses or other family members [5, 6]. Caregiving for a person with a neurodegenerative disease has been shown to be a high-demand role which can ad- versely affect the physical and mental health and wellbeing of the caregiver (e.g., [7–10]). For example, providing higher Hindawi Neurology Research International Volume 2020, Article ID 7906547, 8 pages https://doi.org/10.1155/2020/7906547