Cathy Cress

Expert in Aging Life and Geriatric Care Management

Depression Is A Caregiver Crisis

PDF-Cover-of-11-10-12My-Geriatric-Care-Management-Agency.jpg

Depression is rampant among caregivers . It is in face a caregiver crisis.
Loss is the underpinning of depression

loss of your parent

loss of you own free time

loss of your spouse

loss of freedom

 

What are the triggers to caregiver depression? Unpaid family caregivers are often angry with others not helping out, especially other family members. They can be angry with the care- receiver for interrupting, embarrassing, repetitive behavior

 

Feeling trapped, can often make caregivers bitter. They feel they have no choice and this is their fate in the family.

Exhaustion can be another trigger for anger and depression in a family caregiver.

 

They frequently feeling tired because you can’t get enough rest

The Family Caregiver Alliance that almost 60’% of caregivers show signs of clinical depression.

 

This is why a caregiver assessment and a GDS geriatric depression scale are so important to an aging family caregiver’s mental health and the care receiver’s good care. For younger caregiver’s, metal health supports are crucial care

Family Caregiver Alliance has a host of suggestions for caregivers to deal with depression.

Can A Larger Agency Adapt to Caregiver Assessments?

PDF-Cover-of-11-10-12My-Geriatric-Care-Management-Agency.jpg

There are not on only ethical issues to be solved about a caregiver assessment but a management issue. The caregiver assessment concept brings care managers back to an age-old question. Just who is my client? Is the care receiver your client or is the caregiver your client? For care managers and all professional in aging to see the caregiver, as a client is a major challenge. The focus as care managers and aging professionals has always been on the care recipient as the client.

 

The National Center for Caregiving suggests that the professional in any agency to see both the caregiver and care receiver as client, a shift must take place in the entire agency. Both administration and front line care managers need to build a consensus that the caregiver is a client as well.

 

If a geriatric care manager practice is in a solo practice, there are few problems.However in larger agencies like non –profits, area agencies on aging ,for profit agencies like home health or private duty home care, the administration must create a consensus that will include the caregiver as a client so that front line care managers get the necessary support. Questions like, will the care givers have their own records and what will be the budgetary impacts and pressure on staff to be inclusive, will have to be answered.

Concerns may come up with other staff like more paperwork, taking time away from the care receiver, lack of resources in the community to meet the caregiver and the caregiver’s reluctance to share the information.

 

Where Do You Find A Caregiver Assessment ?

PDF-Cover-of-11-10-12My-Geriatric-Care-Management-Agency.jpg

I have received comments asking where to find a caregiver assessment. I have crafted an assessment tool for geriatric care managers. The assessment is included the chapter on caregiver assessment in my book Care Manager’s Working With The Aging Family and is crafted into an entire service or product in My Geriatric Care Management Operations Manual

 

In general, research into caregiver assessment tells us that they should be tailored to the care giving context, service setting and the program. There is no single protocol for all caregiver assessments. The National Center on Care Giving at Family Caregiver Alliance has suggested that no one approach is optimal in all care settings and situations. I have devised a geriatric care manager caregiver assessment tool that you can be free to alter as you see fit.

 

A geriatric care manager or aging professional can also use the Stress and Appraisal Coping Framework, suggested by Barbara and Carmen Morano in their excellent article on caregiver assessment in the GCM Journal , Winter/ Spring 2007, as another excellent caregiver assessment tool for family caregivers.

 

All are good choices for care manager’s to begin assessing beleaguered and long neglected family caregivers.

 

We are all gathered at the edge of this new world of assessing caregivers and can use thee resources as a starting place.

 

 

Family Caregivers Suffer PTSD after Death of Care Receiver

PDF-Cover-of-11-10-12My-Geriatric-Care-Management-Agency.jpg

 

 

Paula Span who has written the New Old Age Blog in the New York Times for many years has great resources for older family members; geriatric care managers and aging professionals about seniors and family caregivers. Here is a that explains in painful detail that even when the care receiver dies the family caregiver suffers.  Some have PTSD, as mentioned in Span’s article referring to an expert in this at Stanford. I cared for my Dad for 20 years. He had PTSD from being in a German prisoner of war camp. I still have PTSD from the memory of him dying in the emergency room. It can happen to all family caregivers.

Family Caregiving – Is It A Choice or Your Fate? Who Are They

PDF-Cover-of-11-10-12My-Geriatric-Care-Management-Agency.jpg

 

Who are these family members who become accidental caregivers? According the a seminal paper produced by the National Center for Caregiving at Family Caregiver Alliance in 2006, a family caregiver can be defined as any relative, partner, friend, or neighbor who has a significant personal relationship with and provides a broad range of assistance for, an older person or an adult with a chronic or disabling condition. These individuals can be primary or secondary and live with or separately from the person receiving care. The family caregiver does not to have to give direct care but can supervise arrange, or give” a broad range of assistance”

 

Family Caregivers number approximately 44 million, 18 or older provide unpaid assistance and support older people and adults with disabilities in the community. Family members or relatives represent 83%. Most are middle aged and their age’s ranges from 35- 64 years old. Ethnicity vary with 21% for both white and African American, 18% Asian and 18% Hispanic About 1 out of 2 of all caregivers are women. Slightly half of caregivers (48%) are employed outside the home with full time jobs.

The amount of care these family caregivers render varies widely from 8 hours to more than 40 hours. These caregivers give care for an exhaustingly long time and average of 4.3 years.

Spouses who care for their wife or husband at home are, according to Dr. Steven Zarit of the Zarit –Burden scale , between 69 and 73 years old. So they are already somewhat frail themselves to be taking on sometimes complicated major medical tasks.

 

Carol Levine,  a pioneer in the caregiver assessment movement and a female caregiver herself, points out that the broader view we must take as professionals is that family caregivers are mostly wives, daughters and daughters in law. Most are middle aged. .The majority felt they had no choice but to assume this role. It was not their calling; they felt, but their fate

 

Contact

Use the form on the
Contact page to email Cathy.

Email

Connect with Cathy

Get Cathy’s “10 Critical Success Steps to a Profitable Aging Life or GCM Business”