When you care for an elderly family member, it can be a mental and physical burden, because you need to maintain your own life in addition to providing necessary care to a struggling loved one. Balancing a career and children with the responsibilities of caring for a loved one is very stressful and can cause family caregivers to lose sleep and even suffer from health issues.
Being an informal caregiver means you’re essentially taking on another job which is simply too much for some families to be able to handle. Assisting Hands Home Care can help family caregivers with the respite care for elderly services in Norridge, IL, and the surrounding areas. With these home care services, we are able to provide informal caregivers with a necessary reprieve while our trained and certified caregivers take over and provide your loved ones with quality care.
Informal Caregiving
While noble, being an informal caregiver is a difficult job. Often, such caregivers provide care before and/or after their actual job, using their free time for this instead of relaxing or doing leisurely activities. One also has to consider the emotional difficulties that come with seeing a loved one struggle with day-to-day living. This combination can easily lead one to become stressed out to the point that your own health suffers.
There are millions of people in the U.S. who act as informal caregivers to a loved one. About 2/3 of informal caregivers are women, and nearly ¼ of them have reported poor to fair health conditions for themselves. This is because of the following:
- Stress: Being an informal caregiver is essentially working another job, but it can be even more difficult to handle when you’re attached on an emotional level.
- Lack of Sleep and Restlessness: When you’re stressed, it can easily lead to sleep deprivation and restlessness. If you don’t take the necessary time to recover, then you can easily burn yourself out.
