Tuesday, October 2, 2007

Parade Magazine Piece About Adult Caregiving

Did anyone see the piece that Parade Magazine did last month on Adult Caregiving? I thought that it did good job of bringing to light the difficulties that so many of my families are faced with and were not entirely prepared to deal with. It talks about how caregiving can even be life threatening. It states that between 40% and 70% of caregivers have clinically significant symptoms of depression and depression often leads to a neglect of the caregivers own physical and mental health. It also stated a financially devastating fact- over a lifetime, family caregivers sacrifice and average of more than $500,000 in total income. The conclusion to the article is that we all need to spend more time thinking about what we will do when and if we become a caregiver, because the federal government is basically leaving middle America to "figure it out". States are actively trying to support caregivers through many innovative programs and companies are trying to help their employees that may be caregiving an adult. It is a situation that we all have some exposure to, but it doesn't seem that we have any one answer. There are good links in the article that I will add to my blog.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

The magnitude of care giving for middle age adults like myself is complicated by our lack of insight about the developmental agenda of our aging parents. They are clearly different but we dismiss it as simply the product of aging. It proves to be a costly and misguided assumption.

The good news is that once we gain some insight into their unique agenda, what they need to accomplish in the last phase of their life, we can unlock the communication code that will allow us to partner with them through one tough decision after another.

I published an article on “communicating tough choices to aging parents” last year that other caregivers may find interesting and useful. It can also be found on my web site www.dsolie.com under Aging Insights Newsletter.

Best regards,

David Solie, MS, PA

Rosaleen Doherty said...

Thanks David- I will be ordering your book on Amazon.

Anonymous said...

Your insights about the Parade article are right on. Our country has a responsibility to help caregivers receive the support they need for their hard work at a price they can afford. Hopefully, the presidential candidates will start talking about this more often.


P.S. Check out this new research report on caregiving in America. It just reinforces the issues Parade addressed even more!

http://www.caregiving.org/data/Evercare_NAC_CaregiverCostStudyFINAL20111907.pdf