Caregiving Strain and Marriages

CureToday offers some advice for spouse caregivers to help handle the stress and changes that come with caring for their loved one. Caregiving can also be hard on a marriage when one spouse is caring for another family member. Carol O'Dell writes openly on her Mothering Mother and More blog about the stress placed on her marriage when she began caring for her mother. She gives some tips to make the caregiving process easier on your marriage.

The Center for Disease Control's Preventing Chronic Disease also released a study on caregivers of older adults with cognitive impairment and discussed the importance in knowing who is providing care in order to provide adequate public resources to assist caregivers.

The number of caregivers in the United States, including the number of caregivers of people with cognitive impairment, is expected to grow (13). If these caregivers are to continue to provide the foundation of care for people who need assistance, their health, both physical and mental, must be assured. Caregivers, particularly caregivers of people with cognitive impairment, dedicate substantial time to providing care, as our results show. Caregivers of people with cognitive impairment may provide care for long periods of time because of the slow progression of many types of dementia (17). Therefore, caregiving is of public health importance, and caregiving surveillance is vital in assessing and responding to the needs of the growing number of caregivers (5). Evaluating trends in cognitive impairment and caregiving over time is also important. Quantifying the number and type of caregivers in a community will improve our understanding of the health and quality-of-life consequences of providing care and will aid in policy making and decision making.