Loss, Grief, and Bereavement: Implications for Family Caregivers and Health Care Professionals of the Mentally III

Abstract

In the present health climate of managed care, patients remain at home and a major burden is placed on the family as their primary caregivers. As caregivers, family members are expected to manage visits to clinic or hospital, change wound dressings, and participate in other hands-on medical procedures that clinicians have prescribed needing to be done at home, while also maintaining their home environment and perhaps maintaining a full- or part-time job outside the home. It is a tall order that is frequently compounded by the graying of Americans with more who are older, and who will have chronic illnesses requiring lengthy care at home. After the death, the surviving family member is faced with the grief associated with loss, often without attention to his/her needs for counseling. Health care policy must increasingly address this burden in our society which will only grow in the next few decades. This chapter outlines some of the issues for the family caregiver and the medical caregiver team—both of whom face significant stresses in this new environment. When there is a dual diagnosis of mental illness as well as medical illness, the burden for patient and caregiver is much greater.