Psychological distress and anxiety among housewives: the mediational role of perceived stress, loneliness, and housewife burnout

Abstract

Housewives are experiencing chronic stress when dealing with multiple roles (cooking, shopping, tidying the house) in their daily life. Although earlier studies have documented a significant link between role overload and stress-psychological well-being in the workplace, few studies have been conducted among housewives despite their high anxiety and burnout reports. The diathesis-stress model and transactional model of stress indicate that there may be somecontributory factors related to mental health. Within these frameworks, this research aimed to examine housewives' psychological distress and anxiety by focusing on three contributory factors namely housewife burnout, perceived stress, and loneliness. The present study was a novel contribution to the literature investigating the mediating roles of those three contributory factors between psychological distress and anxiety among housewives. Participants were 500 volunteer housewives between the ages of 20 and 70 from Turkey. In addition to Demographic Information Form, The Perceived Stress Scales (PSS-10), The General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12), The UCLA Loneliness Scale-Version 3 (UCLA LS3), The Housewives Burnout Questionnaire (CUBAC), and The Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI) were used. Results showed that there were four paths between psychological distress and anxiety in the model, explaining 31.19% of the total variance in anxiety in housewives. The relationship between psychological distress and anxiety was mediated by perceived distress, loneliness, and housewife burnout. Specifically, the higher psychological distress and higher anxiety relationship were associated with higher perceived distress, higher loneliness, and higher housewife burnout. The findings provide beneficial insight for clinicians to prioritize the abandonment of the cope with loneliness, perceived stress, and burnout while working with housewives having psychological distress and anxiety.