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Family members already form an "invisible workforce" that cares for America's frail elderly. But changes in policy and family structure — from elderly divorce to smaller families — suggest that friends and extended family will play even more important roles as caregivers in coming years.
Eighteen million Americans already care regularly for a fragile older relative, most often a spouse or a parent, and the number is expected to at least double by 2050.
Patrick Mizelle and Edwin Fisher, who have been together for 37 years, were planning to grow old in their home state of Georgia.
But visits to senior living communities left them worried that after decades of living openly, marching in pride parades and raising money for gay causes, they wouldn’t feel as free in their later years. Fisher said the places all seemed very “churchy,” and the couple worried about evangelical people leaving Bibles on their doorstep or not accepting them.
Despite fears that dementia rates were going to explode as the population grows older and fatter, and has more diabetes and high blood pressure, a large nationally representative survey has found the reverse. Dementia is actually on the wane. And when people do get dementia, they get it at older and older ages.
Previous studies found the same trend but involved much smaller and less diverse populations like the mostly white population of Framingham, Mass., and residents of a few areas in England and Wales.
According to the Alzheimer’s Association’s 2016 figures, five million American’s are living with Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Alzheimer’s is the sixth leading cause of death in the U.S. Additionally, this year Alzheimer’s and other dementias will cost the U.S. $236 billion, not to mention the over $18 billion of unpaid care provided by unpaid family caregivers (2015 figures).
Without a medical breakthrough, projected figures show that by 2050 the number of people age 65 and older with Alzheimer's disease could triple to nearly 14 million people, with some projections adjusting the figure to 16 million.
(Next Avenue invited our 2016 Influencers in Aging to write essays about the one thing they would like to change about aging in America. This is the latest submission.)
It is time to modernize our ideas and actions toward aging and health care so older Americans can get the right care at the right time for the right cost. Therefore, I challenge the health care industrial complex and most particularly its leaders — those that design, regulate, pay for and provide services — to deliver on the promise, not just the provision, of better health and health care.
Dementia, including Alzheimer's disease, has overtaken heart disease as the leading cause of death in England and Wales, latest figures reveal.
Last year, more than 61,000 people died of dementia - 11.6% of all recorded deaths.
The Office for National Statistics says the change is largely due to an ageing population.
People are living for longer and deaths from some other causes, including heart disease, have gone down.
Family caregivers are now spending on average 20 percent of their income providing care to a family member or other loved one, according to a new AARP Research Report, “Family Caregiving and Out-of-Pocket Costs: 2016 Report.”
The situation is so dire that, the report said, caregivers may be putting “their own economic and retirement security at risk” by stepping up to help a loved one. Hardest hit are Latino and low-income family caregivers who are spending an average 44 percent of their total annual income to care for aging relatives.
When Polly Shoemaker, RN, BSN, MBA, looks back on early 2016, she doesn’t know how she juggled everything. As director of clinical systems at Tulsa, OK-based St. John’s Hospital, Shoemaker already had a challenging job. But when her father’s esophageal cancer took a southward turn, she not only had to carry the logistical load of his care, but also keep up with work and family. “I don’t know how I did it, but I needed to and wanted to, so I did,” she says of her struggles as a sandwich generation caregiver.
Some tiny clusters of brain cells grown in a lab dish are making big news at this week's Society for Neuroscience meeting in San Diego.
Known as "minibrains," these rudimentary networks of cells are small enough to fit on the head of a pin, but already are providing researchers with insights into everything from early brain development to Down syndrome, Alzheimer's and Zika.
At a Sunday press conference at the neuroscience meeting, researchers said minibrains are helping them figure out how the Zika virus can disrupt human brain formation in the early stages of fetal development.
Norma-Jean McLaren has been living with two electrodes implanted into her brain for almost a year.
“You can feel them, they’re like bumps,” said McLaren on a recent fall morning as she touched the top of her skull. She traced her hand down her neck, where there is a wire connecting the electrodes to a battery-powered neurostimulator in her chest. This device provides a steady stream of electrical impulses to a part of her brain that regulates memory.
November is National Family Caregivers Month, a time to recognize the 40 million Americans who take care of a loved one — helping them live independently at home where they want to be. What family caregivers do is extraordinary — adult children taking care of their parents, husbands and wives caring for their spouses, mothers and fathers caring for adult children. They deserve our gratitude and support throughout the year and most especially during this month when we traditionally give thanks.
Our country's 40 million unpaid family caregivers devote a large portion of their own money toward the care of their loved ones.
They're spending an average of $6,954 a year — nearly 20 percent of their income — on out-of-pocket (OOP) costs related to caregiving, according to a new AARP study, "Family Caregiving and Out-of-Pocket Costs: 2016 Report."
Hispanic/Latino and low-income family caregivers spend even more: an average of 44 percent of their total annual income.