THE IMPACT OF GRANDCHILD CAREGIVING ON DEPRESSION AMONG GRANDPARENTS: A SCOPING REVIE

JIAJING HU^1,2Nan Zhang^1*Patreeya Kitcharoen^2*

• ¹School of Health Management, Inner Mongolia Medical University, Hohhot, China
• ²Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, Mahidol University, Nakhon Pathom, Thailand

Grandparents' involvement in grandchild caregiving has become an increasingly common social phenomenon worldwide. Compared to non-caregivers, grandparents' depression may be influ-enced by their caregiving responsibilities. To support the academic development of this field, a scoping review was conducted to map the existing literature, identify research gaps, and offer di-rections for future research on grandparents, grandchild caregiving, and depression. Following the PRISMA-ScR guidelines, a total of 3,174 articles were retrieved from eight academic databases. After four rounds of screening, 30 studies were included for data extraction, analysis, and synthesis. The results suggest that the effects of grandchild caregiving on grandparent depression are complex, which may be attributed to differences in the definition and measurement of caregiving, differences in the characteristics of grandparents and grandchildren, family structures, and national or cultural contexts. Several research gaps were identified, including the lack of studies in many countries and regions, the absence of qualitative and mixed-method studies, limited diversity in the measurement of grandchild caregiving, the lack of attention to differences based on lineage (maternal vs. paternal grandparents), insufficient focus on the characteristics of the grand-children being cared for, the use of single measures for depression, and limited exploration of the mechanisms linking caregiving to depression. Future research should expand geographic coverage, particularly in developing areas, and incorporate more qualitative approaches. It is also rec-ommended to diversify caregiving measurements by considering caregiving motivations and subjective burden, examine lineage-based differences in caregiving and depression, collect data on the characteristics of grandchildren, apply various depression scales, and develop theoretical mod-els to explore the pathways through which caregiving affects grandparents' mental health. This review has several limitations. Only English-language publications were included, which may have excluded relevant studies from non-English-speaking contexts. The exclusion of gray literature and unpublished studies may also have limited the comprehensiveness of the evidence base. Moreover, the heterogeneity of study designs, caregiving measures, and sample characteristics reduced comparability and the depth of synthesis.