Self help for family caregiver - Releiving Care Giver Stress Is a Priority

by Scott
(Miami Fl)

It never ceases to amaze me or surprise me that when when I relieve my 85 year old mother and give her a break from her caring duties for my 86 year old Dad,how it still hurts me how a once brilliant mind has changed.

I know the changes affect my Mother in ways unimaginable. She has been dealing with this over the past 10 years and the changes have been dramatic.

Scott

Scott

It is so hard for family members providing care for a loved one with dementia to go through the changes and experience the painfully slow deterioration of a loved ones mind and personality.

From diagnosis to death with dementia an individual may live as long as 20 years.

That it why it is so important family members to understand and learn as much as they can about the type of dementia they will be dealing with. There are many different types of dementia http://www.aginghomehealthcare.com/types-of-dementia.html, each type has different parts of the brain that are affected and will result in different behaviors exhibited.

Once a care giver knows the types of dementia, the next step is to understand that there will be
different dementia stages http://www.aginghomehealthcare.com/dementia-stages.html an individual will go through.

The next most important step in providing care for a person with dementia is basically what your title addresses- self help for the care giver.

Statistics show that 50% of family care givers caring for an individual with the diagnosis of dementia predeceases their loved one. Care giver stress http://www.aginghomehealthcare.com/caregiver-stress.html actually kills.

So it is very important that family care givers understand this early and learn techniques to handle their stress and take steps to make their own health a priority.