Client Education

A Great Senior Life

Are You a Caregiver?

By: Denise Hamilton, Special to AccentCare

Do you shop for an invalid neighbor each week and bring him hot meals? Do you help your elderly mother bathe and dress? Help her balance her checkbook? Do you have a child with special physical or mental needs, perhaps cerebral palsy or autism?

If the answer to any of these questions is yes, then you are a caregiver. The term is a broad one referring to anyone who assists another person who needs help. It runs the gamut from a one-hour weekly visit to 24-hour attendant & personal care.

In short, caregiving is such a common and yet misunderstood concept that you or someone in your family may already be a caregiver and not know it.

As scientific advances make it possible for people to live longer, caregiving has exploded across the American landscape, some experts estimate that there are up to 25 million family caregivers in the United States today, and that doesn't include the contributions of friends, neighbors or paid help.

Yet the new century also finds many Americans giving care while holding down full-time jobs. To complicate matters even further, many caregivers fall into the so-called "sandwich generation," tending to aging parents and raising children at the same time.

For caregivers, this can be a recipe for disaster as their own health deteriorates and depression and stress take their toll. "The caregiver is living in a war zone, dealing with significant problems on an ongoing basis, and often failing to realize that the first thing to do is take care of yourself. Who's going to care of both of you when you fall apart?" asks Gary Barg, chief executive officer of Caregiver Media Group in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., which publishes the magazine Today's Caregiver.

Denise Hamilton is a Los Angeles-based freelance journalist and Fulbright Scholar who writes a health column for the Los Angeles Times.