THAT'S MEN:Research shows that people who are helpful to neighbours, family and friends live longer, writes PADRAIG O'MORAIN
WANT TO live longer? Try caring for someone else. Research suggests that carers significantly increase their own lifespan.
I mention this because the burdens of caring are what get the publicity – especially when carers are campaigning, entirely legitimately, for a better deal from Government.
To say that people live longer under certain conditions is not the same as saying their quality of life is better – and if you read carer Bernadette Brady’s unforgettable article on pages 6 and 7, you’ll see what I mean.
Stephanie Brown, an assistant professor of internal medicine at the University of Michigan Medical School, analysed data on more than 1,500 US couples over a seven-year period. All were aged 70 or over when the study began.
At the start, each person was asked how much care he or she got from the other. Most didn’t need care from the partner, but 10 per cent received 14 hours or more of help weekly. This included everything from help with taking medicines to help with bathing.
Given the stresses associated with caring, we might expect the carers in that 10 per cent of couples to be at greater risk of death due to stress-related diseases. Not so. In all, 27 per cent of people in the study died, but the highest death rate was found in those who did not have to care for a partner. Those who provided 14 hours of caring or more had the lowest death rate.
Brown puts her findings together with other research showing that people who help others have better health. Something in our evolutionary history may favour helpers, she suggests.
Her own previous research has shown that people who are helpful to neighbours, family and friends live longer. Such people also find it easier to cope with the death of a spouse.
She is now setting out to examine the neurological effects of altruistic behaviour in an attempt to get more answers.
As regards carers, she suggests that caring may actually reduce the stress people feel in seeing a loved one suffer.
I think carers might empathise with this. Many will have experienced the unease a carer can feel when away “enjoying” a break from the person they are caring for. Sometimes that unease goes away only when the carer returns home and resumes caring.
But let’s look at quality of life issues. The big sacrifice carers make, I believe, is in putting the rest of their lives on hold while they do their caring.
Many sacrifice marriage and career prospects. Others miss out on the things they had intended to do when they retired. Carers suffer a loss of freedom. They are tied to the house most of the time. Their lives can become dominated by doctors, nurses, clinics and hospitals.
Sometimes the person being cared for – and I think this can apply both to men and to women – resists co-operating with the medical regime. This can be a source of great frustration for carers.
Another source of frustration can be the failure of other family members to help out – some of whom make free with their criticisms on those occasions when they choose to descend on the carer and caree.
Needless to say, carers are in no position to go out and have fun. Few of them will be spending time at Christmas parties this year.
What is, usually, inherent in caring is a huge sense of belonging and that, I think, is one of the major emotional rewards carers get from what they do.
That is why, when the caring is over, they need plenty of support from family and friends. Not only is the partner or parent gone, but that whole world of hospitals and long-stay homes – and some carers spend hours every day with their loved one in hospital – also suddenly vanishes.
I’m not trying to get away from the health benefits found in the University of Michigan study. Like the rest of us, though, carers have needs other than longevity. Family and friends should recognise the importance of these needs and not just at Christmas.
To read more on the University of Michigan study, go to www.psychcentral.com and type “disabled spouse” into the search box, without the quotation marks.
Padraig O'Morain (pomorain@ireland.com) is a counsellor accredited by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. His book, Light Mind - Mindfulness for Daily Living, has just been published by Veritas