A WAY TO STAY Home Care Yardley Newtown PA

My sister Devon and I admire what families do to keep their aging parents home; we consider it a spiritual Act of Service.  We find that families don’t think what they do is extraordinary – it’s just what family does for family.  They act as Geriatric Care Managers and cobble together amazing caregiving and life style solutions so their aging loved ones can continue to remain at home.

When families finally call us in to help them it’s almost always an emergency healthcare situation with their aging parent.  Something has happened to the elder and at long last the family network has been stretched so thin it’s close to breaking and the family can no longer provide all the necessary care.   

By the time families call in the “troops” (Home Care Agencies like A WAY TO STAY) they are physically, emotionally and spiritually depleted and it’s our job to help realign caregiving responsibilities so the heavy lifting falls on our caregivers instead of family members.

 My point is that families need to remember that taking care of your parents is usually a marathon not a sprint; you must practice physical, emotional and spiritual self care to continue to help your loved one for the long run.   The Alzheimer’s Association just released updated facts and figures related to this disease and its impact on families (some 15 million people) who provide care for their aging parents or loved ones.  

• Caregivers not only suffer emotionally but also physically. Because of the toll of caregiving on their own health, Alzheimer’s and dementia caregivers had $7.9 billion in additional health care costs in 2010.
• More than 60 percent of family caregivers report high levels of stress because of the prolonged duration of caregiving and 33 percent report symptoms of depression.

We know not everyone can afford Private Duty Home Care but if you can – get help now.  If you can’t afford Private Duty call your Area Agency on Aging and find out if your parents qualify for care subsidized by the Agency.

 Home care counselors at A WAY TO STAY Home Care are available to talk with you about your needs.  A WAY TO STAY is a home care agency providing In-Home Care in Yardley.

The New Old Age reports that depression symptoms in seniors is more than just “sad and crying all the time”.

By PAULA SPAN
Picture this experiment: A group of older adults living independently, most in their 70s and most female, are handed a couple of paragraphs to read. “You are 70,” the first line says.

From there, the story heads in one of two directions. “You have been feeling unusually sad for the last few weeks,” half of the study subjects read. But the others read this: “You don’t seem to be able to enjoy things that you used to, like watching TV and reading the newspaper.”

Both sets of paragraphs go on to describe additional and identical problems: trouble sleeping, feeling tired, losing appetite and weight, a lack of concentration. Neighbors have noticed a change.

When the participants finish reading, an interviewer asks them, “What would you say is wrong, if anything, with the person in the story?”

Fewer than half the participants correctly identified this unhappy 70-year-old as suffering from depression, reports a new study in The Journal of Applied Gerontology. That’s not encouraging — perceiving the problem, of course, is an important factor in seeking or accepting help.

What’s particularly interesting is that the study subjects were more apt to see this fictional person as depressed if he or she were said to suffer the most classic symptom: sadness. “If the person was sad, almost half the respondents knew that the person was depressed,” said Amber Gum, a University of South Florida psychologist and the study’s lead author. When the story instead referred only to a lack of interest in formerly pleasurable activities, only about a third of the participants described the 70-year-old as depressed.

“I’ve had older clients say, ‘I’m not depressed — I’m not sad and crying all the time,’ ” Dr. Gum told me in an interview. But depression in old people can take an unusual form. Though depression with sadness (in psych-speak, dysphoria) remains the most common type, seniors are more likely than younger adults to suffer depression marked by loss of interest, also called anhedonia.
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Home care counselors at A Way to Stay are available to talk with you about your home health care needs including how to reduce caregiver stress while providing better, affordable care. A Way to Stay is a home care agency providing In-Home Care in Yardley.