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TWO NEW PHYSICAL ACTIVITY E-CARD AVAILABLE AT |
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www.medicare.gov/caregivers >
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| According to AFCA, simply put, family caregiving is the act of assisting someone you care about who is chronically ill or disabled and who is no longer able to care for themselves. Family caregiving is the bedrock upon which this country’s healthcare system depends. The services provided by family caregivers represent 80% of all home care services and are conservatively valued at $375 billion a year.
More than 50 million people, provide care for a chronically ill, disabled or aged family member or friend during any given year Source: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Informal Caregiving: Compassion in Action. Washington, DC: 1998, and National Family Caregivers Association, Random Sample Survey of Family Caregivers, Summer 2000, Unpublished The need for family caregivers will increase in the years ahead. People over 65 are expected to increase at a 2.3% rate, but the number of family members available to care for them will only increase at a 0.8% rate. Source: Mack, Katherine and Thompson, Lee with Robert Friedland. Data Profiles, Family Caregivers of Older Persons: Adult Children. The Center on an Aging Society, Georgetown University, page 2, May 2001 Elderly spousal caregivers with a history of chronic illness themselves who are experiencing caregiving related stress have a 63% higher mortality rate than their non-caregiving peers.Source: Schulz, R. and Beach, S. R., Caregiving as a Risk Factor for Mortality: The Caregiver Health Effects Study. Journal of the American Medical Association, Vol. 282, No. 23, December 15, 1999. Stress of family caregiving for persons with dementia has been shown to impact a person’s immune system for up to three years after their caregiving ends thus increasing their chances of developing a chronic illness themselves. Source: Drs. Janice-Kiecolt Glaser and Ronald Glaser, “Chronic stress and age-related increases in the proinflammatory cytokine IL-6.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, June 30, 2003. Family caregivers who provide care 36 or more hours weekly are more likely than non-caregivers to experience symptoms of depression or anxiety. For spouses the rate is six times higher; for those caring for a parent the rate is twice as high. Source: Cannuscio, C.C., C. Jones, I. Kawachi, G.A. Colditz, L. Berkman and E. Rimm, Reverberation of family illness: A longitudinal assessment of informal caregiver and mental health status in the nurses' health study. American Journal of Public Health 92:305-1311, 2002. A wife's hospitalization increased her husband's chances of dying within a month by 35%. A husband's hospitalization boosted his wife's mortality risk by 44%. Source: Nicholas D. Christakis, Professor, Health-care Policy, Harvard Medical School, Boston and Suzanne Salamon, M.D., Associate Chief, Geriatric Psychiatry, Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital, Boston, New England Journal of Medicine, Feb. 16, 2006. Family caregivers experiencing extreme stress have been shown to age prematurely. This level of stress can take as much as 10 years off a family caregiver's life. Source: Elissa S. Epel, Dept of Psychiatry, Univ of Calif, SF, et al, From the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Dec 7, 2004, Vol 101, No. 49. Family caregivers report having a chronic condition at more than twice the rate of non-caregivers. Source: Health and Human Services, Informal Caregiving: Compassion in Action. Washington, DC: Department of Health and Human Services. Based on data from the National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH), 1998 and the National Family Caregivers Association, Random Sample Survey of Family Caregivers, Summer 2000, Unpublished and National Alliance for Caregiving and AARP, Caregiving in the U.S., 2004. |
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