For many Americans, a holiday provides one of the few times during the year that adults and their elder loved ones spend quality time together. Holidays may be a time when families face and discuss the difficult decisions about finding care for their older relative. Any one of the behaviors listed may or may not indicate that an action should be taken. Your family member’s physician should also be kept informed of physical or psychological behavior.

Ten Warning Signs

1. Changed eating habits within the last year resulting in weight loss, having no appetite, or missed meals?
2. Neglected personal hygiene resulting in wearing dirty clothes, body odor, bad breath, neglected nails and teeth, sores on the skin?
3. Neglected their home so it is not as clean or sanitary as you remember growing up?
4. Exhibited inappropriate behavior by being unusually loud or quiet, paranoid, agitated, making phone calls at all hours?
5. Changed relationship patterns such that friends and neighbors have expressed concerns?
6. Had physical problems such as burns or injury marks resulting from general weakness, forgetfulness, or possible misuse of alcohol or prescribed medications?
7. Decreased or stopped participating in activities that were previously important to them such as bridge or a book club, dining with friends, or attending religious services?
8. Exhibited forgetfulness resulting in unopened mail, piling newspapers, not filling their prescriptions, or missed appointments?
9. Mishandled finances such as not paying bills, losing money, paying bills twice or more, or hiding money?
10. Made unusual purchases such as buying more than one magazine subscription of the same magazine, entered an unusual amount of contests, increased usage of purchasing from television advertisements?
    

There may be perfectly good reasons for the changes such as recent hospitalizations or grief over the recent loss of a spouse may which may cause short term alterations in routines and behaviors, but the important thing is to assess how well Mom or Dad is really doing. We tend to gloss over changes because we fear the discussion and the inevitable changes. When you ignore warning signs, you contribute to the potential for increasing the risk of harmful outcomes and neglect.

For information or to discuss your concerns, you may call the Eldercare Locater at 800-677-1116. You will also find a number of online resources and information on the Links page of this site by clicking on the tab at the top of this page.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 24th, 2008 at 12:25 am and is filed under Healthy Living, Safety. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.