Coronavirus leaves unpaid adult caregivers isolated, stressed
ATLANTA - Tara Stack's life and home are full.
"I have a 12-year-old, a 10-year-old, a 7-year-old and a 4-year-old," Stack says.
Stack is also a fulltime caregiver for her mother Denise, who is 65 and was diagnosed several years ago with early-onset Alzheimer's disease.
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Tara Stack, a married mother of four, is taking care of her mother Denise, who is living with Alzheimer's disease. (Tara Stack)
She lives with Stack and her husband in their Duluth, Georgia, home.
"Originally, before the quarantine, she would go to an (adult) daycare for the day," Stack says. "So, me and my husband would go to work, the kids would be in school, and she would be in daycare, and we'd all come together at night."
They were in a comfortable routine, she says, but the pandemic disrupted that.
Her mom's daycare closed, and the kids’ school temporarily shut down.
Tara Stack, a Duluth, Georgia married mother of four, is a caregiver for her mother Denise, who has Alzheimer's disease
“Just the thrown-off schedule, how loud it is, how just unorganized the day is, it’s really detrimental to her brain,” Stack says. "She no longer remembers who we are, who the kids are."
Her mother’s dementia has made her fearful.
"She's scared all the time,” she says. “She wakes up in the morning literally terrified, shaking."
Stack, who works from home, says her mother has become increasingly attached to her.
"She is usually about 2 or 3 feet away from me at all times, whether I'm cooking, whether I'm outside, whether I'm folding laundry."
Asked how she is coping, Stack says she has tried counseling but says her stress is situational, tied to caring for her mother.
Tara Stack of Duluth, Georgia, styles her mother Denise's hair at their Duluth, Georgia, home.
She has also called the Alzheimer's Association's 24/7 Helpline, which helped her sort through some of the complicated feelings she’s experiencing.
Emory School of Medicine and Grady psychologist Dr. Nadine Kaslow says the pandemic has been especially tough on unpaid caregivers like Stack.
"I think that's very lonely," Dr. Kaslow says. "It's relentless. It's a lot of demands."
A recent CDC survey found two-thirds of unpaid caregivers of adults reported struggling with at least one mental health issue during the pandemic, from anxiety to depression, to thoughts of suicide.
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Tara Stack and her family (Tara Stack)
"What I think we need to do is find ways to be as compassionate as we can towards ourselves," Kaslow says. "Develop an idea that 'good enough' is just all we can do right now and change our expectations for 'good enough.'"
Stack says she tries to carve out some alone time, but it is not easy.
"I've tried to get myself up earlier in the morning, just to spend time by myself, whether in devotion or working out," she says.
She worries about what her kids and her husband are giving up.
"My kids are partially losing their mother to my mother, because I'm caring for her all the time, like 24/7, from the minute my mom wakes up, to the time she goes to sleep," she says. "There isn't much time that I'm giving to my children."
Tara Stack of Duluth, Georgia, is a caregiver for her mother.
Stack worries people living with Alzheimer's disease and dementia and their families are being largely forgotten in the pandemic.
"We're shutting things down in quarantine, we're trying to take care of the rest of the world," Stack says. "But, there is a whole group that can't interact with their family, that can't go out and do things, that don't understand what's going on, and it's killing them."
For more information on the Alzheimer's Association Helpline and virtual support programs, visit alz.org.
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