Care for Family Caregivers

Helping sick, aging loved ones can cause physical illness in the helper. It may be possible to increase resilience

- LYDIA DENWORTH

MY MOTHER LIVED WITH Alzheimer’s disease for 12 years.

Even with a lot of help, caregiving took a toll on me. It was physically hard to transfer her from bed to wheelchair, hard on my time when Mom couldn’t be left alone, and emotionally devastating as her decline took away the person I had known and loved. She passed away in 2024.

Roughly one in five American adults is now where I was: responsible for the care of a chronically ill or disabled loved one. About half of them are doing this work for elderly relatives. It is well known that family caregivers are at higher risk than noncaregivers for depression. But such helpers also have more than their share of diabetes, asthma, obesity and a variety of pain conditions. And they tend to die earlier. In a study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released in 2024, caregivers scored worse than noncaregivers on 13 of 19 health indicators. The root cause, research shows, is chronic stress. It leads not only to mental distress but also, by hampering the immune system, to physical ailments.

Caregivers are finally getting some care, however. Scientists are using what they’ve learned about how stress affects mental and physical function to develop approaches that could strengthen resilience. “It’s important to understand that the caregiving itself, though a strain, does not determine worse mental and physical health,” says psychologist Elissa Epel, who directs the Aging, Metabolism and Emotions Center at the University of California, San Francisco. “There are a lot of resilience factors that can make a difference.”