Tag Archives: carers
How to cope in the festive season as a carer when your loved one has an eating disorder
10:12 – 24 December 2012
Do you care for someone with an eating disorder?
Anxious about the festive season?
The festive season can be stressful for anyone with the responsibility of a family. For a carer of someone with an eating disorder, or someone currently receiving eating disorder treatment, it can be simply filled with dread and fear.
If you are a carer, it may feel like everyone else seems to be looking forward to the cooking and eating of elaborate meals… whereas you find yourself just wishing that the festive season was over before it has even begun.
Is your elderly neighbour on their own this Christmas?
Being alone has same effect on health as 15 cigarettes every day
At least you have got each other. But estimates suggest more than half a million elderly people will be on their own this Christmas.
Many will feel bereft and lost following the death of a long-term partner. Some will have children but may not live close enough for the family to visit with any regularity.
And the sad, solitary state of many older people is not just a state of mind. Experts have equated the effect of loneliness on health to that of obesity or smoking 15 cigarettes a day.
It can hasten dementia and increase the risk of heart disease and high blood pressure.
Half of all people aged 75 or over live alone and at least one in ten of the ten million over-65s in Britain is badly affected by solitude.
Charity urges dementia awareness over festive period
Sunday 23 December 2012
As families gather for the festive period, a charity is urging people to look out for the signs of dementia in elderly relatives.
The Alzheimer’s Society said Christmas was often the only time families saw each other all year.
The charity has called for people to look out for symptoms in relatives.
Initial signs of the condition, which is caused by diseases of the brain, may include short-term memory loss that affects every day life, problems with thinking or reasoning, or unexplained anxiety, anger or depression.
It is also advising anyone concerned that they may have dementia to visit their GP to get a proper diagnosis.
