Your ability to pick up the strands of your life when your caregiving tasks are done also depends on your good health. Emotional health C aregiving often brings a large emotional burden. The patient, probably someone close to you, is a victim of an incurable, terminal illness. You may well endure a prolonged period of loss and grief. This period can also be a time of considerable anxiety and uncertainty about the future.
Many people become very depressed.
O ne of the harder emotional issues of caregiving is the distance that grows between you and the person in your care. There comes a time when the impaired person is no longer the person you once knew. He or she is no longer reliable and cannot be trusted to remember to do what you ask or to provide you with accurate information. The disease reduces both memory and judgment. Your relationship with the person will surely become different from what it was before the onset of the disease.