Health
When a parent must care for a parent: How to avoid caregiving burnout, according to experts
For members of the so-called “sandwich generation,” doing double-duty caregiving can take a toll.
Serving as a caregiver for a parent with dementia while also caring for kids and maintaining social and work relationships can come with physical, mental and emotional challenges, several experts expressed to Fox News Digital.
It can be especially difficult dealing with the role reversal, experts say.
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“The role of a parent is someone to look up to, respect and listen to,” Dr. Nancy Frye, PhD, a professor of psychology at Long Island University Post Campus in Brookville, New York, told Fox News Digital.
When a parent is in cognitive decline, questions arise about how to step out of traditional parent-child roles, she said, with “no clear norms or guidelines.”
For members of the so-called “sandwich generation,” doing double-duty caregiving can take a toll, experts say. (iStock)
“People have lived their lives looking up to their parents, turning to them for advice, and respecting their privacy and autonomy,” Frye continued.
“Now, they find themselves poking around in their parents’ affairs and wondering when to start making decisions for them.”
Stress of the ‘sandwich generation’
“Sandwich generation” caregivers — those who are tasked with taking care of multiple generations, such as parents and children, simultaneously — reported significantly higher levels of personal burnout compared to those who care solely for children, according to a 2023 study published in the International Journal of Aging & Human Development.
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One middle-aged caregiver from Long Island, New York, who asked to withhold her name, told Fox News Digital she can barely find time to take a shower when taking care of her mother with dementia.
“How can I find time to go for a walk or coffee with friends when I am afraid she will wander or fall?” she asked.
Those who are tasked with caring for members of multiple generations reported significantly higher levels of personal burnout compared to those who care solely for children. (iStock)
To avoid caregiver burnout when taking care of a parent who is dealing with an illness such as dementia, health experts said it is important to carve out time for yourself.
“Caring for a person with dementia can be very stressful,” Frye said. “In order to take care of somebody else, you need to take care of yourself. It is OK to take a break.”
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Dr. Marc L. Gordon, chief of neurology at Zucker Hillside Hospital Northwell Health on Long Island, New York, said caregivers should not hesitate to rely on others.
“It is important to find time for respite, and to ask for help rather than trying to do it all by yourself.”
He added, “Just like they tell you on an airplane, in case of an emergency, you should put on your own oxygen mask before attempting to assist others.”
“How can I find time to go for a walk or coffee with friends when I am afraid she will wander or fall?”
Darci Henry, a certified dementia practitioner and licensed nursing home administrator with Trualta — a Canadian company that provides online support and education for caregivers — said caregivers experience a range of emotions, all which are valid.
Henry emphasized to Fox News Digital the importance of delegating responsibilities to other family members and outsourcing tasks.
There are approximately 53 million caregivers in the U.S. as of 2020, a jump from 43.5 million in 2015, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). (iStock)
This may mean using community resources, such as meal prep, grocery delivery and laundry services.
“Reaching out and getting that extra layer of support is really important for your own preservation,” Henry said.
“Taking time for self-care is not selfish. It’s necessary.”
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Even for those who cannot leave the house, Henry suggested taking “micro moments.”
“It can be something as small as taking a few deep breaths, doing some stretching, standing outside on your porch or just enjoying a cup of coffee,” she said.
When it comes to speaking with children about their grandparent’s condition, an expert said knowledge is power. (iStock)
It is also important to carve out time for family relationships and daily check-ins with spouses or partners, according to Henry.
That could include going for a walk after dinner, having regular family meetings and discussing the division of responsibilities.
Navigating difficult discussions
“If there are underlying issues in the family, you’re definitely going to see them come up once the caregiving role starts,” Henry said.
People should seek professional help if the strain of caregiving is affecting the relationship, she advised.
“Many families have someone from the outside come in and mediate the meetings.”
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Having an outside perspective can help “provide a different lens” for the conversation and make sure everyone is heard, Henry noted.
While communicating, she said it’s key to be respectful and understand limitations and expectations.
“Try to take things as they come, moment by moment,” said one expert. “Focus on a parent having a good or a bad hour or day, as opposed to the parent improving or declining quickly.” (iStock)
When it comes to speaking with children about their grandparent’s condition, Henry said knowledge is power.
“The more you can educate the teenager or young adult about what is happening, the more empathy they may have about the situation.”
“If there are underlying issues in the family, you’re definitely going to see them come up once the caregiving role starts.”
To help deal with the mood swings often associated with dementia, Henry suggested adhering to a stable routine as much as possible and developing strategies to identify and prevent triggers for certain behaviors.
“Educating yourself on what is happening in that person’s brain is really important, because that will help you understand that they are not giving you a hard time, they’re having a hard time,” Henry said.
‘One day at a time’
It’s best to embrace a “one-day-at a time” mindset, Frye suggested.
“It’s tempting to take a parent’s state and behavior — whether it’s good or bad — as an indication of what’s to come,” she said.
To help deal with the mood swings that are often associated with dementia, an expert suggested adhering to a stable routine as much as possible and developing strategies to identify and prevent triggers. (iStock)
“Try to take things as they come, moment by moment. Focus on a parent having a good or a bad hour or day, as opposed to the parent improving or declining quickly,” Frye suggested.
Continuing to give a parent as much say and autonomy as possible can be helpful, she added — as long as it’s safe.
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“Decades ago, Ellen Langer did a study in which people in a nursing home were given a plant and told either that they needed to care for it, or that the staff would care for it,” Frye said.
“Those who were tasked with caring for their own plants lived longer.”
There are approximately 53 million caregivers in the U.S. as of 2020.
That’s a jump from 43.5 million in 2015, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
For more Health articles, visit www.foxnews.com/health.
Deaths from bombs and other traumatic injuries during the first nine months of the war in Gaza may have been underestimated by more than 40 percent, according to a new analysis published in The Lancet.
The peer-reviewed statistical analysis, led by epidemiologists at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, used modeling in an effort to provide an objective third-party estimate of casualties. The United Nations has relied on the figure from the Hamas-led Ministry of Health, which it says has been largely accurate, but which Israel criticizes as inflated.
But the new analysis suggests the Hamas health ministry tally is a significant undercount. The researchers concluded that the death toll from Israel’s aerial bombardment and military ground operation in Gaza between October 2023 and the end of June 2024 was about 64,300, rather than the 37,900 reported by the Palestinian Ministry of Health.
The estimate in the analysis corresponds to 2.9 percent of Gaza’s prewar population having been killed by traumatic injury, or one in 35 inhabitants. The analysis did not account for other war-related casualties such as deaths from malnutrition, water-borne illness or the breakdown of the health system as the conflict progressed.
The study found that 59 percent of the dead were women, children and people over the age of 65. It did not establish what share of the reported dead were combatants.
Mike Spagat, an expert on calculating casualties of war who was not involved in this research, said the new analysis convinced him that Gaza casualties were underestimated.
“This is a good piece of evidence that the real number is higher, probably substantially higher, than the Ministry of Health’s official numbers, higher than I had been thinking over the last few months,” said Dr. Spagat, who is a professor at Royal Holloway College at the University of London.
But the presentation of precise figures, such as a 41 percent underreported mortality, is less useful, he said, since the analysis actually shows the real total could be less than, or substantially more. “Quantitatively, it’s a lot more uncertain than I think comes out in the paper,” Dr. Spagat said.
The researchers said their estimate of 64,260 deaths from traumatic injury has a “confidence interval” between 55,298 and 78,525, which means the actual number of casualties is likely in that range.
If the estimated level of underreporting of deaths through June 2024 is extrapolated out to October 2024, the total Gazan casualty figure in the first year of the war would exceed 70,000.
“There is an importance to war injury deaths, because it speaks to the question of whether the campaign is proportional, whether it is, in fact, the case that sufficient provisions are made to to avoid civilian casualties,” said Francesco Checchi, an epidemiologist with an expertise in conflict and humanitarian crises and a professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine who was an author on the study. “I do think memorializing is important. There is inherent value in just trying to come up with the right number.”
The analysis uses a statistical method called capture-recapture analysis, which has been used to estimate casualties in other conflicts, including civil wars in Colombia and Sudan.
For Gaza, the researchers drew on three lists: The first is a register maintained by the Palestinian Ministry of Health, which mainly comprises the dead in hospital morgues and estimates of the number of unrecovered people buried in rubble. The second is deaths reported by family or community members through an online survey form the ministry established on Jan. 1, 2024, when the prewar death registration system had broken down. It asked Palestinians inside and outside Gaza to provide names, ages, national ID number and location of death for casualties. The third source was obituaries of people who died from injuries that were published on social media, which may not include all of the same biographical details and which the researchers compiled by hand.
The researchers analyzed these sources to look for individuals who appear on multiple lists of those killed. A high level of overlap would have suggested that few deaths were uncounted; the low amount they found suggested the opposite. The researchers used models to calculate the probability of each individual appearing on any of the three lists.
“Models enable us to actually estimate the number of people who have not been listed at all,” Dr. Checchi said. That, combined with the listed number, gave the analysts their total.
Patrick Ball, director of research at the Human Rights Data Analysis Group, and a statistician who has conducted similar estimates of violent deaths in conflicts in other regions, said the study was strong and well reasoned. But he cautioned that the authors may have underestimated the amount of uncertainty caused by the ongoing conflict.
The authors used different variations of mathematical models in their calculations, but Dr. Ball said that rather than presenting a single figure — 64,260 deaths — as the estimate, it may have been more appropriate to present the number of deaths as a range from 47,457 to 88,332 deaths, a span that encompasses all of the estimates produced by modeling the overlap among the three lists.
“It’s really hard to do this kind of thing in the middle of a conflict,” Dr. Ball said. “It takes time, and it takes access. I think you could say the range is larger, and that would be plausible.”
While Gaza had a strong death registration process before the war, it now has only limited function after the destruction of much of the health system. Deaths are uncounted when whole families are killed simultaneously, leaving no one to report, or when an unknown number of people die in the collapse of a large building; Gazans are increasingly buried near their homes without passing through a morgue, Dr. Checchi said.
The authors of the study acknowledged that some of those assumed dead may in fact be missing, most likely taken as prisoners in Israel.
Roni Caryn Rabin and Lauren Leatherby contributed reporting.
Dementia cases in the U.S. are expected to double by 2060, with an estimated one million people diagnosed per year, according to a new study led by Johns Hopkins University and other institutions.
Researchers found that Americans’ risk of developing dementia after age 55 is 42%, double the risk that has been identified in prior studies, a press release stated.
For those who reach 75 years of age, the lifetime risk exceeds 50%, the study found.
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Women face a 48% average risk and men have a 35% risk, with the discrepancy attributed to women living longer than men.
Dementia cases in the U.S. are expected to double by 2060, with an estimated one million people diagnosed per year. (iStock)
The study, which was published in the journal Nature Medicine on Jan. 13, analyzed data from the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities Neurocognitive Study (ARIC-NCS), which has tracked the cognitive and vascular health of nearly 16,000 adults since 1987.
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“Our study results forecast a dramatic rise in the burden from dementia in the United States over the coming decades, with one in two Americans expected to experience cognitive difficulties after age 55,” said study senior investigator and epidemiologist Josef Coresh, MD, PhD, who serves as the founding director of the Optimal Aging Institute at NYU Langone, in the release.
Understanding risk factors
“One of the main reasons for the increase is that great medicine and tecnological advances are keeping us alive longer and age is a risk factor for dementia,” Dr. Marc Siegel, clinical professor of medicine at NYU Langone Health and Fox News senior medical analyst, told Fox News Digital.
“Obesity is associated with inflammation, diabetes and high blood pressure, which are all independent risk factors for dementia.”
In addition to aging, other risk factors include genetics, obesity, hypertension, diabetes, unhealthy diets of ultraprocessed foods, sedentary lifestyles and mental health disorders, the release said.
“We have an obesity epidemic with over 45% adults obese in the U.S.,” Siegel noted. “Obesity is associated with inflammation, diabetes and high blood pressure, which are all independent risk factors for dementia.”
“And as an unhealthy population, we also have more heart disease, and atrial fibrillation is a risk factor for cognitive decline,” he added.
Dementia risk was found to be higher among people who have a variant of the APOE4 gene, which has been linked to late-onset Alzheimer’s disease. Black adults also have a higher risk.
Researchers found that Americans’ risk of developing dementia after age 55 is 42%, double the risk that has been identified in prior studies. (iStock)
Research has shown that the same interventions used to prevent heart disease risk could also prevent or slow down dementia, the study suggested.
“The pending population boom in dementia cases poses significant challenges for health policymakers in particular, who must refocus their efforts on strategies to minimize the severity of dementia cases, as well as plans to provide more health care services for those with dementia,” said Coresh.
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What needs to change?
Professor Adrian Owen, PhD, neuroscientist and chief scientific officer at Creyos, a Canada-based company that specializes in cognitive assessment and brain health, referred to the increase in dementia cases as a “tidal wave.”
“This new study’s anticipated surge in dementia cases underscores the urgent need for early and accurate detection,” he told Fox News Digital.
“By catching issues early, we give people the power to make lifestyle adjustments, seek available treatments and plan their futures with clarity.”
“By identifying cognitive decline at its earliest stages, we have an opportunity to intervene before patients and families bear the full weight of the disease.”
Owen recommends conducting regular cognitive assessments as part of routine check-ups to proactively identify early signs of cognitive decline.
“By catching issues early, we give people the power to make lifestyle adjustments, seek available treatments and plan their futures with clarity,” he said.
“By identifying cognitive decline at its earliest stages, we have an opportunity to intervene before patients and families bear the full weight of the disease.” (iStock)
Maria C. Carrillo, PhD, chief science officer and medical affairs lead for the Alzheimer’s Association in Chicago, said there is an “urgent need” to address the global crisis of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.
To help keep the aging brain healthy, the Alzheimer’s Association published its report 10 Healthy Habits for Your Brain. Some of the tips are listed below.
For more Health articles, visit www.foxnews.com/health
– Participate in regular physical activity.
– Learn new things throughout your life and engage your brain.
– Get proper nutrition — prioritize vegetables and leaner meats/proteins, along with foods that are less processed and lower in fat.
– Avoid head injury (protect your head).
– Have a healthy heart and cardiovascular system — control blood pressure, avoid diabetes or treat it if you have it, manage your weight and don’t smoke.
Research has shown that the same interventions used to prevent heart disease risk could also prevent or slow down dementia. (iStock)
The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health.
Fox News Digital reached out to the researchers for additional comment.
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