Client Education

Care Giving and Caregivers

The Problems Caregivers Face

By: Denise Hamilton, Special to AccentCare

Advocates say caregivers need to pay special attention to their own needs so that they don? burn out and get sick. A December 1999 study on caregiver mortality published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that older spouses caring for a loved one had mortality risks 63 percent higher than non-caregivers did.

Researchers have also noted a dramatic rise in anxiety, headaches, weight change and depression in caregivers. One study found that up to 46 percent of caregivers are clinically depressed and use prescription drugs for depression, anxiety and insomnia up to three times more than the rest of the population.

There is also more potential for injury on the job. One-fourth of all care receivers are either bedridden or use wheelchairs, which means caregivers risk straining back muscles as they move patients around. Likewise, diseases such as Alzheimer's can cause dementia and agitation, and confused, paranoid and violent patients have been known to lash out against family caregivers they no longer recognize.

A full 16 percent of caregivers indicate their health has worsened since they took on the responsibility of care, and more than half of primary caregivers for Alzheimer? patients develop significant psychological distress, the Alzheimer's Association says. Nancy Reagan, for instance, has spoken publicly about the stresses and emotional pain of caring for her husband, former President Reagan, who has Alzheimer's disease.

"That's the insidiousness of it," says Gary Barg, chief executive officer of Caregiver Media Group, which publishes the magazine Today's Caregiver. "The need is so great and the stress is so strong that the last person to see the danger is often the caregiver herself. But there comes a point when the caregiver needs to care for his/her health as well as the person he or she is caring for."

There are also hidden financial costs to caregiving. Have you ever had to take an afternoon off from work to drive an elderly parent or a disabled child to the doctor? Multiply that by millions and you come up with this statistic: The aggregate costs of caregiving in terms of lost productivity by full-time workers is estimated at $11.4 billion per year. Add part-time caregivers and the figure climbs to $29 billion.

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