"Many exhausted, ill caregivers today don't seek help because they don't realize that they have a recognizable condition. According to a report from the National Consensus Development Conference on Caregiving, the most common psychological symptoms of caregiver syndrome are depression, anxiety and anger. Peter Vitaliano, a professor of geriatric psychiatry at the University of Washington and an expert on caregiving, said that the chronic stress of caring for someone can lead to high blood pressure, diabetes and a compromised immune system. In severe cases, caregivers can take on the symptoms of the person that they care for, he said. For example, a person caring for someone with dementia may develop progressive memory loss. Worse still, this syndrome can lead to death. Elderly caregivers are at a 63 percent higher risk of mortality than noncaregivers in the same age group, according to a study by University of Pittsburgh researchers Richard Schulz and Scott Beach reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association in December 1999."
Additional reading
- https://calmisc.blogspot.com/2019/09/home-care-of-relatives.html
- https://calmisc.blogspot.com/2019/09/euthanasia.html
- https://www.caregiver.org/caregivers-guide-understanding-dementia-behaviors (link isn't working as on September 21, 2021)
- https://www.beingpatient.com/voice/moving-after-dementia-diagnosis/: Good communication
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