Help for the helpers: Caregivers often may feel angry, depressed - Ventura County Star
By Cecilia Oleck, Detroit Free Press
November 6, 2006

Minding the needs of others could be taking its toll on your mental health — especially if the person you're caring for is aging, is chronically ill or has special needs.

Caregivers are at a higher risk for suffering from depression than their noncaregiving peers. Up to 60 percent of caregivers show signs of clinical depression, according to the Family Caregiver Alliance National Center on Caregiving in San Francisco.

Here are five scenarios that could lead to feelings of stress and depression in caregivers and experts' advice on how to cope.

1. Struggling with special education: A caregiver for a child with special needs is not getting the attention or answers she needs from a teacher or the school the child attends.

The feelings: Overwhelmed and helpless, like no one is listening to her concerns or working to address them.

A solution: Find someone who can advocate for you and with you. Ideally, this would be someone who knows the education system better than you might and has navigated it in a similar situation. This could be another parent, a teacher, the school administrator or a hired professional, says Joseph Richert II, who helps caregivers and patients as an education planner for Special Tree, a Romulus, Mich.-based company that provides services for people with traumatic brain injuries and their caregivers.

2. Dealing with financial stress: The patient needs adaptive equipment, home care, medicine or other services that can strain financial resources.

The feelings: Anxiety, anger and extreme stress.

A solution: Research options, advises Josie DeYonker, a caregiver for her husband who has multiple sclerosis. Insurance might cover some things. For other things, community groups or other nonprofit organizations might have funds available to help cover the costs. DeYonker also says that she researches any new equipment so she is not buying anything unnecessary.

3. Moving a person who can't: The caregiver doesn't know how to physically care for the person, especially when the patient's mobility is limited and the caregiver has trouble moving the person.

The feelings: Anger, frustration, bitterness, sadness.

A solution: Look for someone who can teach those things, says Lucia Yeager, an occupational therapist for Easter Seals. She trains caregivers to transfer patients and also helps assess the kind of equipment that might make the job easier on the caregiver and patient.

4. Driving all the time: The caregiver spends a great deal of time in the car taking the person in need of care to doctors' visits. Transferring the person can be extremely tiring and difficult.

The feelings: Fatigue, like there is no time to do anything else.

A solution: Look for a doctor or healthcare workers who will make home visits, like the Visiting Physicians Association (http://www.visitingphysicians.com). It won't end the need to go out to the doctors, but it can help alleviate some of the stress on the caregiver and possibly the patient.

5. Refusing help: Others — friends, family members or healthcare aides — have offered to help, but the caregiver refuses help, or the person in need of care doesn't want anyone else to assist them.

The feelings: If a caregiver refuses help, feelings of guilt or failure for not doing everything for the person could come into play. The caregiver also can experience guilt, bitterness, frustration and helplessness if the person in need of care doesn't want outside help.

A solution: Speak up in both cases. "Sometimes you have to have your strength about you," says DeYonker, who has asked for help at times against her husband's wishes. Knowing that she could no longer do for him the things he needed prompted her to put her foot down and ask for help — for her sake and his.

Time to oneself is key

It's been 55 years since DeYonker vowed she would love her husband, Gene, "for better or for worse."

They've been through both.

Fifty years ago, he began suffering from symptoms related to multiple sclerosis. He was diagnosed with it 17 years ago.

Through the years Josie has been Gene's companion and,MORE: Ventura County Star