The Caregiver Burden

I’ve previously written about the varying health costs of caring. Today, the New England Journal of Medicine published the largest study ever to quantify caregiver burden and the widower effect.

The findings pretty much reflect your intuition on the subject. Carers are most stressed/vulnerable when a loved one is admitted to hospital. And, as per previous research, carers well-being is related to the degree of cognitive or physical disability in the person for whom they are caring. The BBC carries a good summary of the paper. And the findings of the paper are robustly lampooned over on NHS Blog Doc (which is rapidly becoming an addiction). However, the paper will be worth a look when it is available online for what it says more generally about the impact of caring on social networks. And for the observations around the impacts of different illness and varying levels of disability on the well-being of carers.

Accounts like this reaffirm what I want for the Happystance workshops for carers. However, I’m very aware that such interventions or activities have to be offered appropriately. Which works against offering it at the riskiest time, as recommended by these authors. And possibly reinforces my belief that the workshops should be available on a regular basis and to offer a way of strengthening carers’ own stress-management and resilience techniques.

Copyright 2006, Tony Plant Happystance Project