COLUMN: Let’s Talk Mental Health – Avoiding caregiver burnout

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 13/02/2023 (812 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Let’s talk again about mental health and relationships. A committed relationship often brings a mixed bag of stressors and rewards to those who embark on the journey. For people with mental illness, these stressors can be even greater. Yet, even when mental illness is a factor, committed relationships can benefit from professional help designed to help a couple get back on track and improve, or at least stabilize, mental health symptoms. Couples therapy can teach improved communication and problem-solving skills and refocus on strengths to enhance couple resiliency.

Counsellors often see the negative effects of relationship stress on people who live with depression, anxiety and related disorders. One person may have been dealing with a condition for quite some time. The partner may initially spend significant time taking care of that person and working hard to maintain the relationship. After years of this, the caregiving partner may grow tired of this role, because they’ve been neglecting their own needs. That partner may start slowly retreating from the role of caregiver, or may respond in angry outbursts, which only makes the other person’s original symptoms worsen.

Recent research shows that partners providing care to their spouses with mental illnesses often exhibit signs of caregiver burnout. The person providing care may spend a lot of time focusing on the suffering of their partner and following prescribed treatment programs to help the partner heal but end up ignoring their own needs. Sadly, their mental health may deteriorate and they may experience changes in their daily habits such as poor sleep and appetite. They may also have thoughts of shame and hopelessness when they begin to feel less effective at helping their partner and don’t see their partner’s recovery progressing.

When couple relationships that don’t involve mental illness are under such stress, partners may physically and emotionally distance themselves from each other. They avoid each other, and when they do come together, the time is often strained and yields only surface-level conversations. The important relationship skill of working together as a unit to tackle common challenges flounders as both partners experience more frustration and despair.

If one or both of the partners lives with a mental illness, these negative emotional responses are often intensified. At a behavioural level, individuals tend to isolate themselves, may rely on alcohol and drugs to numb difficult emotions, and sometimes may even turn to extramarital encounters to relieve their emotional pain. When the marital stress is at its greatest, there’s also a higher chance of substance misuse, movement toward divorce, and domestic violence.

People often ask

Q. How can my mentally ill spouse and I get our relationship back on track?

A. It’s very important that couples in this situation get professional help to get their relationship back on track before the difficulties reach crisis proportions. Sadly, many couples who engage in couples’ therapy have been living dysfunctional patterns of relating to each other for a long time. Therefore, you can expect that counselling will not produce instant results. With patience and commitment to the process, there can be positive change.

Counsellors often meet couples who enter treatment at later stages when one partner is feeling less hopeful than the other and is looking for a plan to end the relationship. Sometimes there’s hope for a relationship and sometimes continuing in the committed relationship will be detrimental to the health of both people, not to mention to any children involved. In these cases, finding a way to separate that, while it may be painful, won’t be destructive can be another valid option for the couple to pursue.

Many counsellors, while they prefer to work at helping to restore a relationship to health, are also trained to help separating couples develop effective and fair separation and parenting plans. In couples with mental illness, the same planning process applies. It can be more challenging because the emotions involved may be more intense, and the individual’s coping strategies may be limited. People who are overwhelmed by the legal procedures involved in separation can benefit from the support of therapists, legal advocates and other healthy family members.