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Health November 2014

Aid for Age

Caregivers Die First

By Tait Trussell

Caregiver stress should be named a syndrome because it would help caregivers seek the help they need. Naming it a syndrome would encourage health professionals to develop better treatment strategies and require health insurers to pay for treatment.

Seventy percent of caregivers over age 70 are said to die before the person they are caring for. It’s called “caregiver syndrome.”

In a report, “Caring for Persons with Dementia,” Dr. Jean Posner, a neuropsychiatrist in Baltimore, Maryland, referred to caregiver syndrome as “a debilitating condition brought on by unrelieved, constant caring for a person with a chronic illness or dementia.”

According to a report from the National Consensus Development Conference on Caregiving, the most common psychological symptoms of caregiver syndrome are depression, anxiety and anger. Much of the material for this article came from a report written by Dr. Andree Leroy, a psychiatrist in Boston.

Peter Vitaliano, a professor of geriatric psychiatry at the University of Washington and an expert on caregiving, said that the chronic stress of caring for someone can lead to high blood pressure, diabetes and a compromised immune system. Many exhausted caregivers today don’t seek help because they don’t realize that they have a recognizable condition.

Professor Vitaliano added that the stress of caring for someone can, in severe cases, cause a caregiver to take on the symptoms of the person they are caring for.

But Vitaliano isn’t sure that giving caregiver syndrome the status of an official diagnosis would be a good thing. He argues that if “caregiver syndrome” were listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (a text published by the American Psychiatric Association that defines all mental health disorders) it could stigmatize the people who have it. “Caregiver stress is directly related to the way our society views the elderly and the people who care for them,”Vitaliano says.

Today, caregiving is viewed largely as a burden in this country. If it were viewed as more of a societal expectation and people were willing to offer more support, fewer caregivers would suffer in isolation, he commented.

Others believe that giving caregiver syndrome an official name would be helpful. Kathryn Anderson, a researcher in families and chronic illness from Florida International University, argues that caregiver stress should be named a syndrome because it would help caregivers seek the help they need. Naming it a syndrome would encourage health professionals to develop better treatment strategies and require health insurers to pay for treatment, she believes.

For now, the American Academy of Family Physicians and the National Center on Caregiving call for every caregiver to be screened for stress and depression. Caregivers who show signs of hostility, anxiety and a loss of interest in activities they used to enjoy are urged to talk to their doctors.

 

Tait Trussell is an old guy and fourth-generation professional journalist who writes extensively about aging issues among a myriad of diverse topics.

Meet Tait