The hardest part of caring for loved ones with dementia is not the everyday practical challenge, but rather the emotional impact of losing the patients’ support and companionship as the disease robs them of their faculties, according to new research.
“You are losing and grieving while you’re providing the care, because Charlie isn’t Charlie anymore,” said Associate Professor Jacquelyn Frank from the University of Indianapolis, who led the research.
Professor Frank gathered responses from more than 400 dementia caregivers around Indiana, most of them spouses and adult children of Alzheimer’s patients.
They were asked: “What would you say is the biggest barrier you have faced as a caregiver?”
Though the respondents’ language varied, a computer analysis found that more than 80 per cent of them touched on a common theme: ‘letting go of the person we used to know,’ as one person wrote, or ‘watching your loved one slip away and forget who people are.’
Tags: alzheimer’s, caregivers, grief, burden
