Four Tips for Managing Depression Due to Chronic Illness

Chronic illness sometimes comes along with something your aging family member might not want to deal with: Depression. Depression can be an issue not only because your senior doesn’t feel well or sees a bleak immediate future due to her illness, but also because she might not be around people in the same ways that she was before.

Home Care in Glen Rock NJ: Depression

Keep up with the Treatment Plan

When someone is feeling depressed, it’s much more difficult to care about really important things, like medications and other treatments that do actually help a chronic illness. It might fall to you to help your elderly family member to stay with her treatment plan, even when she’s not feeling it. Exercise and diet also do factor in helping her to manage her depression.

Talk to Her Doctor about Possible Solutions

Your senior’s doctor may have some excellent advice and solutions that can help. A change in her medication or trying other treatments might be something that helps both to manage her chronic illness and to manage her depression. Regardless, her doctor needs to know that she’s dealing with depression so that the right decisions can be made all the way around.

Make Sure She Has a Support Network

When your elderly family member has a solid support network to lean on, the difficult times aren’t as tough to get through. Your senior’s support system might be made up of friends, other family members, neighbors, and even people she encounters regularly when going about her day and her business. Her support system also includes you and possibly even home care providers, which helps both emotionally and practically.

Set Some Achievable Goals

Having some goals can also help to give your senior something to reach for every day. Without goals, every day can kind of blend together. But with some achievable goals in place, she’s got a target to aim for and that can help to improve her confidence every day. Even if those goals are as simple as medication compliance or eating meals every day, that’s something that can help her and that she can easily do.

Depression is something that you can help your elderly family member to manage, but you might not be able to completely get rid of it for her no matter how hard you try. It’s important to be aware of how depression affects her, though, so that you can help her through those times that are worse than other

If you or a senior family member are considering hiring Home Care in Glen Rock, NJ, please contact the caring staff at Caring Solutions Home Care LLC.  In-home senior care servicing Bergen & Passaic Counties. Call today at (973) 427-3553.