Invisible Army Of Caregivers, We See You
It is easy to blame your stress on the subject of the most recent clickbait you clicked on. If not for those chirpy influencers or those people who have nothing better to do than talk about how offended they were by the fact that a marginally Internet famous person was offended by a recent feature film, everything would be fine. Deep down. Though, you know that the reason you are stressed is not the price of eggs, the short attention span of today’s youth, or the new Lilo and Stitch remake and the fallout from it. The real problem is something that confronts us in almost every aspect of our lives, and it confronts numerous other people, but we do not talk about it directly, either because we cannot find the words or because it is simply too depressing to talk about. Actually, we have several of these problems. One such problem is functional unemployment, which affects one in four Americans of working age. If you are functionally employed, you either earn your income entirely from gigs, or else you have a part-time job where the hours are so unpredictable that it is impossible to supplement it with anything besides low paying gigs. The caregiving epidemic has even more wide-ranging implications. If you are feeling overwhelmed as a family caregiver or know that family caregiving is in your family’s future and want to avoid the worst possible outcomes, contact a Tampa estate planning lawyer.
One in Three Americans Provides Care for an Elderly Person
According to a report on the NPR website, 106 Americans fulfill the role of caregiver to an adult family member. That is almost a third of the entire U.S. population, and more than a third of American adults. The stress of caregiving is not just one kind of stress; it is almost every kind of stress, melted down into a sense of family obligation. People who act as caregivers to relatives lose out on income, sleep, or both; some work full-time and then come home to a full workload of helping their elderly parents with housework and personal care.
The NPR report follows a woman named Dawn who has been a caregiver to her mother, who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1996, shortly after Dawn graduated college. For years, she felt alone in her struggles, before reaching out to other family caregivers and finding out how much they had in common. As with many other caregivers, her caregiving responsibilities strained her personal relationships. Dawn’s relationship with someone she was sure she would marry fell apart because her ex felt that Dawn was using her mother’s illness as an excuse to be emotionally unavailable, and Dawn’s conflicts with her sister got so bad that they did not speak to each other for several years, but now they share caregiving responsibilities. Dawn is a social worker, and although helping other people at work brought her comfort, she felt isolated because she could not talk about her own struggles. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she established a support group for family caregivers, which has provided her with support to this day.
Contact David Toback About the Realities of Family Caregiving
A Central Florida estate planning lawyer can help you make realistic plans for a future where one family member relies on other family members for daily care. Contact David Toback in Tampa, Florida to set up a consultation.
Source:
npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2024/10/31/nx-s1-5172517/caregiver-caregiving-isolation-burnout-resources
