How Family Caregivers Can Cope with Depression
1. What Family Caregivers can do to Prevent Depression?
2. Planning Ahead
3. How to Help Yourself
4. What to do if another Family Caregiver You Know Shows Symptoms
1. What Family Caregivers can do to Prevent Depression?
Social support is essential.
As a family caregiver you should reach out for both logistical help and emotional support from the outset of caregiving and not wait until you are feeling strained. That means:
Trying to involve the whole family in care planning (and giving) from the outset. You may not be able to but your life will be so much easier if you can.
Find out if help is available to you through church and community supports. Find a caregiving buddy or a caregiver group on line or in person support groups. The more connected you feel to other like-minded, supportive people, the less likely you are to become isolated, depleted and depressed.
Additional thoughts to prevent major depression include:
--Determining commitments: You will be less likely to become depressed if you proactively determine what you are willing and able to do and also what you feel limited in doing. In this way, you will exercise what control is available to you and be less likely to feel helpless and depressed. In other words, planning is a way of preventing yourself from becoming overwhelmed and depressed.
--Handling sacrifice: When you develop positive meanings about the caregiving you're doing, you are less likely to become depressed. Positive meanings include wanting to give something back, wanting to do God's work, wanting to make a difference in a loved one's life. Spiritual beliefs, in particular, have been shown to make people more impervious to depression.
--Protecting intimacy: Caregiving often takes us away from our most important and replenishing relationships. By finding ways of protecting the intimate connections you have, with others and your care-recipient--you can help prevent depression.
If you think you are suffering from major depression, step one is to go see your doctor. Major depression is a serious illness that can be treated with talk therapy and/or medication. Left unchecked it can impact the care you give to your loved one as well as your own wellbeing.
2. Planning Ahead
We are all told to plan ahead - for our kids' education, for our own retirement. As a family caregiver something else to plan ahead for is the possibility that at some point you might not be able to provide care for a short or long time.
If you don't have a "What If I Can't Provide Care" emergency plan in place, now is the time to create one. If your depression becomes debilitating someone is going to have to take over some or all of your caregiving duties. Family caregivers of course don't believe anything serious will happen to them. We are the caregivers after all, not the one needing care. The reality is however, you are more prone to illness than non-caregivers, and any one of us could get hit by the proverbial bus.
Recognize that caregiving, like any job, is made up of lots of individual tasks, not all of which are of the same importance. Some tasks take a few minutes and some tasks take a few hours. Some tasks are easy and others require learned skills and fortitude. Create a list of tasks that needs to be done in any given week. Group your tasks into categories such as personal care tasks for your loved one, transportation, household chores, etc.
Ever thought about what would happen if you got hurt and couldn't speak? Who would know to go help your loved one?
To meet that need NFCA has created a special line of Family Caregiver Medical ID jewelry. Click here to find out how you can get a customized piece of medical ID jewelry, just in case you are hit by the proverbial bus, and how to get ID jewelry for your loved one as well.
3. How to Help Yourself
If you are dealing with major depression you must take time to think about yourself, your future and your personal life goals in order to move forward.
- Talk to your doctor to get a diagnosis and discuss treatment option
- Consider medication; research the pros and cons on the web;
- Consider individual or group therapy
- Set personal goals - both short term (take a walk every day) and long term (develop more of an on-going support network)
- Think of things that will make you feel better and do at least one of them
- Talk to other family caregivers who have suffered from depression; find out what they learned from their experience, but remember everyone is different
4. What to do if another Family Caregiver You Know Shows Symptoms
- Approach the family caregiver, gently, and recommend that they go for an evaluation with their primary care physician
- Immediately pitch in and help that family caregiver with their family caregiving responsibilities
- Help the family caregiver find resources and support groups that will ease their stress and sense of isolation
- Send the family caregiver a card every day to demonstrate they are loved
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