What happens when a family caregiver needs caregiving?
Research into caregiving reveals a common sequence of events: caregivers often get depressed, which then makes them more vulnerable to a range of mental health issues. Caregivers are also more likely to not have much support. In some instances, caregivers are more...
How to Help Someone With Depression While Being Fair to Yourself
How much of yourself do you have to give to your partner in support, and what is the true cost if you forget yourself in the process? The fact of the matter is this: Living with a spouse with depression isn’t impossible, but the question of how to support someone with...
Struggle for Peace
It’s been quite some time since I’ve written my blog. Part of the reason is that things have been pretty much status quo with Dave’s health. There hasn’t been a significant change that has inspired me to write. I noticed that I didn’t write a single blog post in all...
Dealing With Caregiver Guilt During The Coronavirus Crisis
As a person caregivers regularly turn to for support, Carol Zernial would seemingly have answers to most of the difficult questions that come with assisting older loved ones. But she finds herself struggling with a dilemma involving her own father. The 90-year-old,...
Ask Dr. NerdLove: How Do I Leave An Abusive Relationship?
My partner has extreme (and untreated) anxiety, depression, and an unbelievable amount of insecurity that makes her jealous, petty, confrontational, and not-at-all trusting. She’s come from a rough past, with abuse, and despite it, or maybe in spite of it, has...
Familism is Making our Latinx Caregivers Sick
The tradition of keeping everything in the family is an amiable labor of love, but it is making our Spanish speaking caregivers In America ill. Familism is affecting our Latinx caregiver’s mental and physical health negatively. “ Familism refers to the value of the...
My Therapist Says It’s Okay to Stew in Sadness
When I am physically sick, and when I am mentally sick, I push myself to my absolute limit. Productivity, I believe, is a cure for my illness. I showed up to that first appointment with Kara extremely lethargic and sluggish, but I was smug, too. I thought, she’s going...
Recovering from the trauma of care
Dr. James Gordon can attest that anyone who works in healthcare comes to work with many caregivers. His focus has been on developing mind-body medicine to use self-care to make recovery from trauma and depression accessible to all. Since the release of the DSM III,...
Depression Tried to Take My Mom. She and My Dad Fought Back.
In their early 60s, my parents were empty nesters: Dad enjoying retirement and Mom, an extremely energetic and joyful person, continuing a 25-year teaching career. However, over the course of a few months, Mom noticed herself changing. First came increased worry and...
What To Do When Your Teenager Has Depression
Now 48 years old with a child of my own, I can’t imagine how upsetting it must have been for my parents to suddenly see their happy-go-lucky teen fall into a pit of darkness and lethargy. As a volunteer with the National Alliance for Mental Illness (NAMI)...
I worry about how to care for my brother with autism and his mental health when my parents are gone
My parents have long avoided having the talk with me about how I can take care of my older brother when they are gone. Daniel, who is 29 and on the autism spectrum, needs full-time supervision and someone is always at home with him — my mom, my dad or me. But I worry...
My boyfriend makes fun of my depressed half-sister
Dear Prudence, My 19-year-old half-sister is currently living with me. Her mother basically drove my sister into a mental breakdown with her unrealistic expectations and forced activities. Once she reached college, my sister realized she hated her major, her life, and...
No happy endings
I will start this off like an AA meeting. Hello, my name is Raven and I became a caregiver in May. I remember waking up that Mother’s Day morning feeling fantastic, I put on this cute high low hobo dress with a wide brim floppy hat and I walked to work. Before...
A Photographer Turns A Lens On His Father’s Alzheimer’s
At first, Stephen DiRado thought his dad was dealing with depression. Gene DiRado, then in his late 50s, had become more withdrawn, more forgetful. So Stephen processed his growing concern by doing what he’d done since the age of 12: taking photographs.it was...
So Sad Today
I’ve long been a fan of Heather Havrilesky, so when I saw her interview Melissa Broder, the woman behind the formerly anonymous Twitter account, @sosadtoday, I knew it would be good. shit can't get worse *shit gets worse* — so sad today (@sosadtoday)...
What can we learn when a clinical trial is stopped?
An early halt to a trial of deep brain stimulation for depression reveals little about the treatment but more about the changing nature of clinical trials. Some medical experiments are more daunting than others. The one that neurologist Helen Mayberg came up with to...
Listless And Lonely In Puerto Rico, Some Older Storm Survivors Consider Suicide
A social worker, Lisel Vargas, recently visited Don Gregorio at his storm-damaged home in the steep hillsides of Humacao, a city on Puerto Rico’s eastern coast near where Category 4 Hurricane Maria first made landfall last September. Gregorio, a 62-year-old former...
What the World Gets Wrong About My Quadriplegic Husband and Me
His ex-coworker’s husband, now part of his mind map’s constellation of wheelchair users and those who love them, might drift by as a data point, confirming his hypothesis about the pity afforded them—all because I didn’t work hard enough to convince him otherwise. I...
My Father The Werewolf
When I was a kid, my Dad taught me all about werewolves. Little did I know he was preparing me to understand his depression. Decades later, the werewolf analogy still helps me make sense of my father. Because, as with a werewolf, it is impossible to peel the man and...
Five impactors that lead to elderly depression and anger
WASHINGTON, JUly 31, 2017 – Meltdowns are natural occurrences in life. Everyone experience it, from children to teenagers, up to adults. Unfortunately, meltdowns among elderlies are the hardest to handle. Mood swings among seniors often result from poor health, pain,...
How to care for the caregiver
One patient, Dana (name has been changed to protect the privacy of the patient), helping her mother care for her brother who has leukemia, told me, “my life right now doesn’t matter.” This is an extremely self-destructive attitude. With 2015 figures...
Queer Crip Love Fest: The Two Great Loves of My Life
What does love mean to you? That’s a really interesting question for me right now because I’ve had some tough family stuff go on. I’ve always had a complicated family; I don’t have many blood relatives I am close to whatsoever. So family love has come from friends as...
You’re Not Just ‘Growing Old’ If This Happens To You
When Dr. Christopher Callahan examines older patients, he often hears a similar refrain. “I’m tired, doctor. It’s hard to get up and about. I’ve been feeling kind of down, but I know I’m getting old and I just have to live with it.” This fatalistic stance relies on...
When The Blues Won’t Let You Be
Rini Kramer-Carter has tried everything to pull herself out of her dark emotional hole: individual therapy, support groups, tai chi and numerous antidepressants. The 73-year-old musician rattles off the list: Prozac, Cymbalta, Lexapro. “I’ve been on a bunch,” she...
When Pretend Play Is Real For Alzheimer’s Patients
Sitting beside a neatly made crib, 88-year-old Vivian Guzofsky held up a baby doll dressed in puppy dog pajamas. “Hello gorgeous,” she said, laughing. “You’re so cute.” Guzofsky, who has Alzheimer’s disease, lives on a secure memory floor of a home for seniors. Nearly...Top 4 reasons you’re not exercising — SOLVED
“Life, right now, is going to get better for you. Everyone can include in proper fitness into their lifestyle, despite any constraint.”
– Edward Jackowski, PhysEd
Ways caregivers can cope with stress
As a caregiver, have you been stressed lately? In this video, PhysEd focuses on defining stress and techniques on how to deal with it. PhysEd emphasizes that exercising is the key to cope with anxiety, stress, and depression. PhysEd suggests that performing aerobic...
Caregiver Profile: Andra H.
Who is a caregiver? Nearly 1/3 of Americans serve as family caregivers and millions more serve as paid professional caregivers. The Caregiver Space is sharing their stories. Meet Andra I’m 44 and engaged to the love of my life! Mom to one daughter. I love life...
Let’s Talk About Caregiver Depression (And the Courage It Takes to Face It)
As caregivers, we can be all too familiar with crippling depression and how hard it is to deal with.
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