What Activities Do Caregivers Often Provide

A caregiver is defined as an individual who cares for another individual’s routine care and meets their personal needs. Parents are caregivers to their children, but may also be caregivers to their own elderly parents. Individuals with debilitating disabilities also require help from a caregiver.

2) Who provides caregiving services?

A caregiver may be informal, such as family member or close friend or formal, such as a paid nurse. The publication Caregiver Stress (2015) states that in 2012, “36% of Americans provided care to another.” According to that statistic approximately 1/3 of the population can expect to provide informal care to another person and that rate is steadily increasing.

3) What activities do caregivers often provide?

Depending

on the severity of the situations caregivers might only perform or assist with tasks that are too hard for the individual they care for or they might be responsible for complete care of the individual. For example, a fairly mobile and healthy elderly individual might just need help with house cleaning and bathing. Conversely, an elderly individual with late stage dementia might need help with meal prep., medicine, shopping, dressing, feeding, bathing, bill paying, transportation to doctors’ appointments and house cleaning.

4) What is caregiver stress?

Caregiving can be very rewarding, but it can also be physically and emotionally draining, which leads to caregiver stress. Providing care can be a full-time job. Some people must act as a caregiver between a regular full-time job and caring for their own family. Trying to juggle so many activities can be overwhelming and actually cause health problems for the caregiver.

5) What can caregivers do to prevent stress and burnout?

Fortunately, there are steps caregivers can take to help relieve their stress to better care for their loved ones and themselves. First they must recognize the signs of stress and take steps to get help. They can ask for help from other family members or consider formal care, contact their local Area Agency on Aging for helpful resources, join support groups and most importantly remember to keep up with their own health.