ALZHEIMER'S: Keeping Calm Counts
Discovering a caregiver's most important asset
BY:MYRA DEMBROW
If you’re caring for someone with Alzheimer’s disease, your strongest asset might be a positive attitude.
Researchers at Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, NC, found a link between younger, less-educated caregivers who seemed overwhelmed or depressed and dementia patients who showed hard-to-manage behavior, such as asking repetitive questions, wandering off, demonstrating anger or behaving destructively. “These symptoms are part of the disease,” says the study’s author, Kaycee Sink, MD, a Wake Forest assistant professor of gerontology, “and the caregivers aren’t causing them. But certain styles of caregiving may bring them out.” For example, if you’re feeling overburdened, you’re probably irritable. Your irritability may provoke a patient’s difficult behavior, says Sink.
The study, reported in the May 2006 issue of The Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, looked at nearly 6,000 dementia patients and their caregivers, most of whom were a spouse, daughter or daughter-in law. “We’re not trying to blame the caregivers,” explains Sink, “but to better understand the complex puzzle.”