Alzheimer caregivers need help too

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The recent movie "Still Alice," starring Julianne Moore reflects the pain of Alzheimer patients, those who suffer from the disease. The complications, as the movie reveals, can occur at a young age, even though we identify Alzheimer patients as elders.  At the same time, there is pain for the caregivers too, quite different for each person involved research has found

 Caring for an Alzheimer's patient can create stress and grief, but not everyone handles the issues of being a caregiver the same way as new research from the University of Michigan revealed a few years ago.

There are racial and ethic differences in how people feel specifically as James McNally of the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research, part of the U-M Institute for Social Research (ISR), found in his study of the variations in the emotional reactions of blacks, whites, and Hispanics to both caring for and grieving for Alzheimer's patients.

"For those caring for a family member with Alzheimer's, the process of bereavement often begins long before the family member's physical death," McNally said.

"These results bring into sharper focus some distinct social and cultural responses to the bereavement process, and help increase our understanding of the emotional costs of Alzheimer's. This understanding can help to inform and improve culturally competent resources to help caregivers not only throughout all stages of their loved one's illness, but also in finding a healthy resolution to grieving."

There has been considerable research on how people to respond to the death of Alzheimer's patients and has found gender and relationship to the patient creates different responses.

This present research by McNally and his associates examined data from the Resources for Enhancing Alzheimer's Caregiver Health (REACH) project lead by Richard Schulz of the University of Pittsburgh's Institute on Aging, data that included a diverse group of 600 caregivers from different cultural and racial groups.

Whites and Hispanics were found three to five times more likely than blacks to report a sense of emotional relief at the death of the Alzheimer's sufferer.

McNally said that fits with existing research that shows blacks have more stressors in their lives than other racial groups. Whereas white and Hispanics tend to find some sense of relief after caregiving duties end, blacks have no such respite. "Blacks are not getting a break," he said.

McNally emphasized his research reveals the large tendencies as opposed to specific, individual responses to any given situation.

Other findings of the study show that whites are twice as likely to report emotional acceptance at the death as blacks and Hispanics.

Also, Hispanic caregivers were only half as likely as blacks to report feelings of anger toward the deceased. But white caregivers were considerably more likely to report anger than the other two groups.

McNally said Hispanics' lack of anger and difficulty accepting the loss of a loved one points to the tight support network often found in Hispanic families.

"Those findings are fairly consistent with the existing research on family support," he said.

Factors such as relationship to the Alzheimer's patient, the emotional and physical health of the caregiver, and socio-demographic background moderated those differences, but there are still differences that exist between ethnic and racial groups.

The stress in caring for people with behavioral issues that can be difficult along with personality changes can be troublesome for most people involved.  Families are often that first line of support, and it is here that the focus should be turned, experts say, to provide help at many levels.

But while there is variation in the levels and types of stress in caregivers of Alzheimer patients, there are places where people can find help, including resources on the Internet.  With the growing numbers of patients in need of assistance, the value of information has magnified along with those numbers.  One of these resources can be found here, offering tips on how to help yourself as well as those you love deal with the everyday tasks of living with someone who might not remember what he or she did yesterday and might not even remember you.

And regardless of the unfairness of who gets treatment and when, the problems facing the population of aging impacts almost everyone, because of the cost of care and the impact on families.