Stressed and Tired Have a New Name: CSS
Whenever I ask a caregiver how they are doing, the first word is usually “tired.” They try to find a balance between work and life, but the demands of the job often get in the way. More importantly, caregivers don’t realize that tiredness is just one symptom related to a more insidious cause – stress. Caring for someone who has a chronic condition like dementia can result in high blood pressure, lowered immunity, diabetes and sometimes even premature death. Add to that feelings of depression, guilt and anger and you’ve got what medical experts now label as “caregiver stress syndrome.” A recent article on CNN brought this new category to light, relatively new even to the medical community.
What happens is that your body sends out hormones in response to stress. When these elevated hormone levels are coursing through your veins for a prolonged period, symptoms similar to post traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, develop.
Because of the unique situation with caregivers, most are so immersed in caring for others that they neglect their own health. Those caring for family members have another component that complicates matters - feelings of grief, shock and anger as they watch their loved ones decline. This heightened emotional state leads them to ignore their own physical symptoms.
Peter Vitaliano, a professor of geriatric psychiatry at the University of Washington and an expert on caregiving, said he wasn’t sure an official diagnosis would help any. Caregiving is viewed as a burden in the U.S. If it was “viewed as more of a societal expectation and people were willing to offer more support, fewer caregivers would suffer in isolation.”
Others think that naming it would help matters by bringing it to the attention of the public as well as the medical community. Diagnosis would then “require health insurers to pay for treatment.”
Let us know what you think in our forum area. Here are some tips to help you fight CSS. Check out our Caregiver Self Assessment checklist to identify problem areas.
Filed under: AGIS, Caregiving, Health & Safety, Research
hi blog owner These days you never know what you are going to find when you click through from the search engines. I searched for high blood pressure symptom - But this is a good blog, and its full of interesting and relevant content. I particularly liked your post sed and Tired Have a New Name: CSS | Caregiver’s Carestation.
I found your blog via Google while searching for divorce and depression and your post regarding sed and Tired Have a New Name: CSS | Caregiver’s Carestation looks very interesting to me. I am very impressed with your site. The quality of the design and content makes it a real winner! Thanks again for a great site and a great resource on the net.