Caregiver Stress, Caring For Aging Parents

Sometimes it starts with a few simple tasks. You, the adult child agree to help Mom or Dad get to doctors’ appointments. Then you have to step in so they can keep their medications straight and take them on time. It’s supervision. But gradually your responsibilities increase as your aging loved ones decline. You need to hire caregivers and they need your oversight. Over a number of months or even a few years, you find yourself in charge of round-the-clock care management. The gradual increase in your duties takes its toll.

Dutiful adult children want to do what is right for their parents. They take on parent-related tasks that occupy a lot of time. This leads to stresses that may remain unaddressed, as the caregiving adult child also must balance their own life responsibilities at home, at work and elsewhere. Health experts uniformly advise that if we don’t manage our life stresses adequately we will pay the price in our bodies and our mental health. If this sounds like you, consider these things:

The Size of the Problem

Nearly 48 million Americans currently provide unpaid care to an adult family member, with the majority caring for aging parents. As the U.S. population ages—with adults over 65 projected to number 80 million by 2040—this figure is expected to rise dramatically.

The responsibilities of caregiving can be very broad, including a lot more than transportation to medical appointments and doing laundry. As we see in the example below, it also can require help with all the things an assisted living or home care agency may not provide. If the person is living at home, it can include handling finances and household maintenance. And then there is the elders’ emotional need for support and companionship, which the stressed-out caregiver may make every effort to also give them on top of everything else.

These tasks, particularly when they accumulate over time, invariably create ongoing pressure on the one in charge. Sometimes, additional stress arises from the feeling that the primary caregiver adult child is unfairly burdened while other siblings fail to assist. Anger and resentment complicate the picture. That is yet another thing the caregiver may be unprepared or ill equipped to manage!

Physical Health Consequence

Research has consistently shown that caregivers experience higher rates of health problems than their non-caregiving peers. The physical and emotional demands of caring for an aging parent can manifest in numerous ways. These often include elevated blood pressure and increased risk of heart disease, as well as stress-related illnesses. Caregivers also may have sleep difficulty and physical pain, headaches and aggravation of their underlying conditions that pre-existed the caregiver role.

Heart Trouble

In one real life example, a client here at AgingParents.com was the primary one responsible for four different, childless aunts, all in their 80s. Each of them had named Amazing Niece (AM) as the one on their legal documents to take charge of their healthcare and finances. All aunts were impaired and physically in need of help. She had ultimately placed all of them in one, good assisted living home. But that home did not take care of all that the aunts needed. She consulted with us when she was at her wits’ end. Laundry was provided once a week at the home. AM knew that with incontinence a problem, she had to do laundry a lot more than once a week. She was doing four extra loads several times a week and endlessly running aunties to their doctors’ appointments. She was totally stressed and exhausted. We tried to caution her to get more help, as the elders could afford it. She was thinking about it. Until she had a heart attack.

That definitely got her attention. Fortunately it was a mild one, and when she recovered, she took our advice to hire a geriatric care manager and supplemental care workers immediately. She felt enormous relief. Being so dutiful and loving to her aunts, she forgot her own health needs. That is a good example of the hidden toll caregiving can exact on dutiful loving family members.

Mental Health Effects

Depression and anxiety rates are high among caregivers as compared to the general population, as much as two to three times greater than for non caregivers. These offer a warning for anyone in this situation. It is critical to consider the personal toll being dutiful and taking care of loved ones can have on you. There are ways to address this before it leads to something as dangerous as an emotional breakdown.

Consider Options

First, the adult child in this stressful situation that seems to go on endlessly must recognize and admit that caregiving does take a toll on the caregiver. If you notice things like insomnia, feeling sad all the time, having physical symptoms like headache and heart palpitations, being irritable and angry, it’s time to take action. Turning to alcohol or treating symptoms with medications only will not solve the overarching stress. Here are some possible strategies an overburdened caregiver can try:

1. Ask for help. If siblings resist getting involved, ask them to manage things like finances, sharing the cost of specific things like transportation, or paying for a hired caregiver to offer relief to the person in charge–you.
2. Seek outside resources. There are some solutions that are temporary, such as “respite care” in a facility short term so you can take a vacation. Research facilities in your parents’ area to find out if this is available at any senior care home.
3. Consider adult day health. This is not an option everywhere but if you do have it available, check it out. Ideally the program picks up the elder, provides a supportive environment during the day, with meals and supervised activities and returns them home at day’s end. It is a most helpful solution for caregivers who are employed and need the time and freedom to meet their own job responsibilities.
4. Join a support group. Many caregiver support groups exist online. Others in your situation are available at all hours. You can vent, share, learn and make connections with similarly situated folks at no cost. Organizations like the Family Caregiver Alliance, AARP, and the Alzheimer’s Association offer searchable databases to help caregivers find local or virtual support groups specific to their situation.

Mental Health Counseling

For many caregivers, the emotional burden of watching a parent decline, navigating complex family dynamics, or processing anticipatory grief can be overwhelming. Professional counseling offers specialized support for these challenges. It doesn’t mean you’re “crazy” if you seek mental health help. Rather, it means you are smart enough to recognize that we all do better when we learn new tools to help us manage the overwhelming emotions most feel in doing the caregiving job. Caregiving is either hands-on or from a coordination and management position. Both are stressful.

Therapists may offer evidence-based approaches such as cognitive-behavioral therapy, mindfulness training, and stress management techniques specifically tailored to caregivers’ needs. In seeking this kind of help, shop carefully and be a good consumer. Ask if the prospective therapist has experience in helping others with your kind of problem. Pick one who seems easy to relate to and who seems to understand you from the first conversation. If not, keep shopping until you find a good match for what you want. This is one thing that is definitely guided by how you feel in connecting with a therapist, not just someone’s impressive credentials.

The Takeaways

1. Being the primary caregiver, whether it’s in person or from a management angle, is difficult for anyone. Recognize the risks to yourself and your physical and mental health.
2. Have a plan for taking the best care of yourself you can. The challenges are real, but with proper support and self-care, you can preserve your well-being while providing the compassionate care your loved ones deserve.
3. When an aging parent is in declining health, expect the caregiving responsibilities to increase over time. Medical care keeps us going a lot longer than in prior generations, but that means living with chronic health conditions and disabilities. Protect yourself and your health as elders’ needs increase. Your protection from the effects of the job won’t happen all by itself. Your strategy for self-protection can save you from falling apart over the caregiving journey.