Are you a caregiver of a loved one? Are you experiencing depression or burnout due to your caregiving responsibilities and lack of support from other family members? If yes, it is high time that you should encourage all members of your family to get together for a family meeting. Maybe, it becomes tough to convince all to participate in the meeting but such meetings indeed play a pivotal role in reducing caregiver depression. So, you must put all effort as much as you can in ensuring that such meetings can be held regularly. Now, the question is how such meetings play a role in reducing caregiver depression. Let’s find out the same.
Become more aware of the caregiving challenges
When there is a senior at home who is ill and needs a caregiver for his or her physical or emotional well-being, it affects everyone in the family. However, family members remain unaware of the caregiving challenges until they attend a family meeting. When such meetings are arranged more regularly, they gradually started to acknowledge the efforts of the caregiver. This eventually helps a lot in motivating the caregiver to give his or her best and overcome the depression.
Increase participation in non-caregiving tasks
It is not that only caregiving tasks make a caregiver feels exhausted at the end of the day. There are also a bunch of non-caregiving tasks such as laundry, meal preparation, grocery shopping, refilling the prescriptions, and much more which a caregiver does when there is a lack of help from family members. All these tasks take a toll on the health of the caregiver as he or she finds no time for taking care of self or socializing with friends like before. When a family meeting is organized regularly, there is often more participation of other family members within their capacity in non-caregiving tasks, which ultimately gives the caregiver the much-needed time to de-stress and indulge in self-care.
Many times, family members do not understand how much time and effort is needed to take care of an aging adult. Family meetings give a unique opportunity to understand the same and gradually start participating in tasks that they feel comfortable to ease the burden on the caregiver. Still, if you find the family members are offering no support, don’t hesitate to ask help from your friends, colleagues, or neighbors.
Remember, there is no dearth of people with compassion and love in their hearts. There are also several caregiver support groups that you may find online to reduce caregiving depression.