Receiving while giving: The differential roles of receiving help and satisfaction with help on caregiver rewards among spouses and adult-children Marie Y. Savundranayagam School of Health Studies, Faculty of Health Sciences, Western University, London, ON Canada Correspondence to: Marie Y. Savundranayagam, PhD, E-mail: msavund@uwo.ca Objective: There is a growing body of literature on the rewards associated with caregiving and the utility of these rewards on buffering the negative consequences of caring for a family member with Alzheimer’s disease. Many psychoeducational interventions aim to empower caregivers to seek and obtain help from their social support network, with the expectation that help will enable them to cope more effectively. Methods: This study investigated the impact of changes in help and changes in satisfaction with help on positive aspects of caregiving for both spouse (N = 254) and adult-child (N = 208) caregivers who attended a psychoeducational intervention. Results: Analyses using structural equation modeling revealed that increases in amount of help and satisfaction with help were significantly linked with increases in caregiver rewards for adult-children. However, only increases in satisfaction with help were significantly related to increases in caregiver rewards for spouses. Conclusions: These group differences suggest that the quality of support is critical for spouses, whereas both quality and receiving extra help are useful for adult-child caregivers. These findings are discussed in terms of the importance of understanding the differential needs of spouse and adult-child caregivers in practice. Copyright # 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Key words: caregivers; rewards; support; Alzheimer’s disease History: Received 24 September 2012; Accepted 6 March 2013; Published online 22 April 2013 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/gps.3967 Introduction There is a growing body of literature on the posi- tive aspects of the caregiving experience. Positive aspects have been conceptualized as caregiver gain (Kramer, 1997, Yap et al., 2010), rewards (Raschick and Ingersoll-Dayton, 2004), uplifts (Pinquart and Sorensen, 2003), and satisfaction with the caregiver role (Tarlow et al., 2004). These positive aspects or views on caregiving typically include feelings of competence in the caregiving role, being glad to give back to the care receiver, and personal growth (Peacock et al., 2010, Schulz et al., 1997, Tarlow et al., 2004, Yap et al., 2010, Carbonneau et al., 2010). There is also evidence of the utility of these positive views on buffering the negative consequences of caring for a family member with Alzheimer’s disease. Caregivers who held positive views toward their role were less likely to report depression, burden, and poor health (Cohen et al., 2002) and were less likely to institution- alize their family members (Mausbach et al., 2004). One question that arises is the impact that receiving support or help has on positive views toward the care- giver role. Receiving support from others is linked with caregiver well-being (Chappell and Reid, 2002) and improved caregiver health over time for adult- child and spouse caregivers (Goode et al., 1998). Social support can buffer caregiver stress by increasing a caregiver’s perception of the availability of resources and his or her ability to handle stressors (Cohen, 2004). Social support is particularly important when caring for a family member with Alzheimer’s disease Copyright # 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Int J Geriatr Psychiatry 2014 29: 41–48 RESEARCH ARTICLE