The Silent Cry of the Caregiver

If you're taking care of an ailing loved one, there's help out there. Don't go it alone.

A year ago Algerine Correia was at a breaking point. Both of her parents had moved into her Pacific Palisades, Calif., home, and both needed around-the-clock care — her father, Manuel, for dementia and her mother, Anita, for a variety of physical problems. Correia, an active, divorced 65-year-old, says she started sinking emotionally. "As hard as you try to make things better, they're slipping downward," she recalls.

Then she discovered WISE & Healthy Aging, a Santa Monica-based nonprofit that offers support groups for caregivers. Correia joined a close-knit group that meets twice a month to share stories and caregiving tips. The agency provides free adult day care for group members' loved ones during the 90-minute meetings. "When you hear from other people," Correia says, "you don't feel so alone." Anita recently died at 89, but Correia still cares for Manuel, 93.

Agencies like WISE & Healthy Aging exist across the country, offering not just support groups but one-on-one counseling. Caregivers frequently suffer exhaustion, depression and anxiety, explains Steven Zarit, Ph.D., a professor of human development at Penn State University who has studied caregiving issues for 35 years. Talking about your situation with a counselor can relieve a tremendous amount of stress, he adds. Zarit is also a proponent of adult day care programs, which provide caregivers with a "predictable break from their responsibilities." Another benefit: Patients tend to have fewer behavioral and sleep problems after coming home from day care than on days they spend at home.

Even if a caregiver is blessed with sympathetic family and friends, a support group can be a safe, guilt-free place to vent frustrations, says Frankie Aggers, a social worker who facilitates Correia's group. Also, says Aggers, a group can help caregivers let go of the shame and self-blame that are a natural part of the job. "The group allows them to hear that what they're doing is the very best they can and to feel OK," she says. "They just need to feel that."