Family caregiving is a huge topic nowadays. With over 75 million “baby boomers” poised to become the largest generation in American history to require such caregiving, how can it not be? Already, family members — people like you and me — provide $642 billion worth of unpaid care for our spouses, parents, and relatives each year. But what is the price we pay in terms of our personal well-being, physical and otherwise?

While caregiving has been shown to have benefits — it helps to build character, enrich one’s soul, and even ward off cognitive decline —its burdens can be just as significant, if not more so, as demonstrated by a new study published in a recent issue of The New England Journal of Medicine.