Working Caregivers:
Eldercare and Older-Adult Information and Referral Center
- Home
- VNA LifeWeavers - Goodwin Procter
- WarmLines
- Childcare Resource Center
- Challenges Faced by Family Caregivers
- Who Will Care &Who Will Pay?
- 10 Myths About Alzheimer's Disease
- Use Reverse Mortgage to Afford Care at Home
- Risk of Spousal Caregiving
- 6 Step Care Planning Process
- Increasing Financial Pressures on Family Caregivers
- Identifying Signs of Elder Abuse
- Managing Caregiver Stress & Preventing Burnout
- Communicating With an Alheimer's Patient
- Activities for People with Dementia Symptoms
When One Spouse Ails,
Health Risks Rise for Both
By Maggie Jackson, Boston Globe, March 12, 2006
Jim Nickerson has cared for his 58-year-old wife Mary as she's plunged into the depths of Alzheimer's. Since 2001, he's dealt with her sleeplessness, wandering, falls, hospitalizations, and medicines. Sometimes he's sat in his car and wept from sheer hopelessness.
It was no coincidence, he feels, that he needed quadruple bypass surgery a year and a half ago.
''I'm sure it was part of the whole thing," says Nickerson, 65, who lives in Natick and is the building commissioner for Brookline. ''I just didn't know what to do. I didn't know where to turn. I'm being the support person of the family. Everybody's looking at me, and here my spouse was falling apart on me."
Alone, overwhelmed, and often reluctant to ask for help, spouses with sick partners are on the front lines of caregiving in our country. Such spouses, who make up 6 percent of the nation's 44.4 million caregivers, shoulder unimaginable burdens, often while working and dealing with their own impaired health. The cumulative effect can be fatal, a recent Harvard study shows.
The study reveals that elderly people's risk of death rises after their spouse is hospitalized, most especially for people caring for partners with dementia or another psychiatric disease, serious fractures, or chronic heart and pulmonary diseases. The ensuing stress and isolation boost risk of death for the well spouse up to 30 percent, particularly in the first month after a sick spouse is hospitalized.
''People are interconnected so their health is interconnected," says Dr. Nicholas Christakis of Harvard Medical School, coauthor of the study published Feb. 16 in the New England Journal of Medicine. ''There can be illnesses in your spouse that can be worse for your health than the death of your spouse."
Caring for the caregiver is pressing issues as people live longer, grow old at home, and suffer from more long-term chronic illnesses that can strike in middle age and stretch on for decades.
The study says that some of the worst ''caregiver burden" falls to those dealing with diseases that strike cognition and can turn a beloved spouse into a stranger.
As Nickerson's wife's illness took hold, she became more hostile: Nickerson recalls being awakened by his wife at 4 a.m. ''to be reminded I'm a jerk." He sleeps better since December, when she was moved to a nursing home that he visits twice a day.
Still, his children worry. ''He's much more at ease," says his daughter, Liz, who lives in New York. ''But now he's more broken-hearted. Now we have to worry about him being by himself."
One of the worst problems in such situations is that caregivers are reluctant to ask for help. Many Depression-era seniors are just plain stoic, and American caregivers in general tend to be self-reliant to the point of self-destruction, experts say.
''People need to reach out for help and accept it when it's offered," says Suzanne Mintz, the president of the National Family Caregivers Association. She has battled depression and back problems while caring for more than 25 years for her husband, who has multiple sclerosis. ''But in order for people to do that, you've got to work through a lot of issues of pride, and this erroneous idea about independence."
It was no coincidence, he feels, that he needed quadruple bypass surgery a year and a half ago.
''I'm sure it was part of the whole thing," says Nickerson, 65, who lives in Natick and is the building commissioner for Brookline. ''I just didn't know what to do. I didn't know where to turn. I'm being the support person of the family. Everybody's looking at me, and here my spouse was falling apart on me."
Alone, overwhelmed, and often reluctant to ask for help, spouses with sick partners are on the front lines of caregiving in our country. Such spouses, who make up 6 percent of the nation's 44.4 million caregivers, shoulder unimaginable burdens, often while working and dealing with their own impaired health. The cumulative effect can be fatal, a recent Harvard study shows.
The study reveals that elderly people's risk of death rises after their spouse is hospitalized, most especially for people caring for partners with dementia or another psychiatric disease, serious fractures, or chronic heart and pulmonary diseases. The ensuing stress and isolation boost risk of death for the well spouse up to 30 percent, particularly in the first month after a sick spouse is hospitalized.
''People are interconnected so their health is interconnected," says Dr. Nicholas Christakis of Harvard Medical School, coauthor of the study published Feb. 16 in the New England Journal of Medicine. ''There can be illnesses in your spouse that can be worse for your health than the death of your spouse."
Caring for the caregiver is pressing issues as people live longer, grow old at home, and suffer from more long-term chronic illnesses that can strike in middle age and stretch on for decades.
The study says that some of the worst ''caregiver burden" falls to those dealing with diseases that strike cognition and can turn a beloved spouse into a stranger.
As Nickerson's wife's illness took hold, she became more hostile: Nickerson recalls being awakened by his wife at 4 a.m. ''to be reminded I'm a jerk." He sleeps better since December, when she was moved to a nursing home that he visits twice a day.
Still, his children worry. ''He's much more at ease," says his daughter, Liz, who lives in New York. ''But now he's more broken-hearted. Now we have to worry about him being by himself."
One of the worst problems in such situations is that caregivers are reluctant to ask for help. Many Depression-era seniors are just plain stoic, and American caregivers in general tend to be self-reliant to the point of self-destruction, experts say.
''People need to reach out for help and accept it when it's offered," says Suzanne Mintz, the president of the National Family Caregivers Association. She has battled depression and back problems while caring for more than 25 years for her husband, who has multiple sclerosis. ''But in order for people to do that, you've got to work through a lot of issues of pride, and this erroneous idea about independence."
Copyright 2010 Working Caregivers: Eldercare and Older-Adult Information and Referral Center for Working Caregivers. All rights reserved.
