Caregiving – emotional and economic consequences: Who takes care of the caregiver?

By Rejoice Esi Asante (PhD)

([email protected])

The month of May is dedicated to mental health awareness, where the world focuses on moving from awareness of mental health issues to active care, particularly through initiatives. The Key theme for 2026, highlights personalized self-care, building community support networks, and addressing AI-related risks to mental health, with campaigns like “Action: for yourself, for someone else, for all of us”.

It is also a month dedicated to celebrating women. This International Women’s Day 2026, (March 8) is a global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women. The day also marks a call to action for accelerating gender equality.

It calls for action to dismantle all barriers to equal justice, discriminatory laws, weak legal protections, and harmful practices and social norms that erode the rights of women and girls. The theme for this year’s campaign is ‘Give to Gain’. International Women’s Day.

Due to the significance of the month, this write up is dedicated to caregiving, where majority of women have been burdened around the world. The article draws attention to the emotional and economic consequences of caregiving, the need for personalized self-care, and the role of organisations in helping to provide care for caregivers in the workplace.

Who is a Caregiver?

A caregiver is a person who attends to the needs of others and provides assistance to someone else who is not fully independent, such as an infant or an individual with an illness, disability, or disorder (APA Dictionary of Psychology). Caregivers provides assistance in meeting the daily needs of others.

Responsibilities may range from bathing, dressing, feeding, transportation, grocery shopping, housework, managing incontinence, assisting with mobility, preparing meals, dispensing medicines, and communicating with those they care for (Johns Hopkins Medicine, 2026). Caregivers are at risk of high stress, depression, anxiety, and physical health issues due to constant vigilance.

Women as Caregivers

Globally, and in most societies, women are primarily, caregivers for their children, relatives, the elderly, and family members with disabilities. Studies show that women make up 57% to 81% of informal caregivers especially for the elderly, while often, female caregivers report higher burdens than men (Bhan, Rao & Raj 2020: Rehab Magazine (Digital technology to support informal caregivers, 2026). Commonwealth Fund Report (2024) notes that around the world, up to 81% of all caregivers for older people are female.

The role is deeply gendered, forcing most women to reduce work hours or leave the workforce, causing significant financial, physical, and emotional strain. They face a double burden of juggling employment with extreme, unpaid household and caregiving duties, creating high levels of stress and a heavy “mental load”

Cultural Expectations make it even worse. Caregiving is frequently seen as a “natural” female duty, reinforcing traditional gender roles where women are expected to provide care, even when it leads to severe time poverty.

This is as a result of filial piety and intergenerational household expectations in most Asian and African societies mostly (Pharr et, al., 2014). These expectations define who provides care—often women—and how it is delivered, influencing the emotional and physical burden on caregivers.

The demanding nature of caregiving often leads to emotional, physical, and financial tolls, impacting the health and well-being of the women caregivers themselves. It has led to career disruption of women who had to reduce work hours, switching to part-time jobs and recently remote jobs to handle caregiving responsibilities.

Bhan, Rao and Raj (2020) conclude that caregiving for older adults results in greater health burdens, particularly mental health, for both women and men, though evidence shows that these burdens may be prominent and manifest in more diverse ways for women relative to men. In Ghana caregiving is predominantly informal, family-based, and heavily skewed towards female providers, with significant economic and physical burdens on caregivers.

Emotional consequences of caregiving

Caregiving often results in chronic stress, depression, anxiety, and emotional exhaustion, frequently leading to burnout or “caregiver stress syndrome”, related to a state of emotional, mental, and physical exhaustion that caregivers experience due to the prolonged demands of caring for loved ones.

Over time, caregiving responsibilities increase and personal well-being takes a back seat, leading to chronic stress and even post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) (caregiveraction.org). Emotional consequences include guilt, anger, loneliness, and feelings of helplessness, often coupled with a loss of personal identity and strained relationships. Depression, anxiety and emotional outbursts over small issues and resentment toward the care recipients, are other emotional symptoms.

Physically, caregivers experience lingering fatigue or continuous feelings of being drained, difficulty sleeping or insomnia, frequent headaches, muscle aches, or body pains and weakened immune system, leading to frequent illnesses. In terms of behaviour, social withdrawal from friends, family, and activities, neglecting personal health (e.g., missing medical appointments) and turning to unhealthy coping mechanisms such as alcohol or overeating are some of the symptoms.

Caregiver burnout is another and it is a state of physical, emotional and mental exhaustion that happens while taking care of someone else. Stressed caregivers may experience fatigue, anxiety and depression. The signs and symptoms of caregiver burnout are similar to those of stress and depression.

Factors that can contribute to caregiver burnout include role confusion, varied expectations, lack of control, too many responsibilities, not realizing burnout is happening. Studies by Cleveland Clinic (2023) show that more than 60% of caregivers, experience symptoms of burnout. Not caring for one’s physical, emotional and mental health can severely impact the way one feel and the ability to complete personal responsibilities.

Economic Burden of Caregiving

The need for long-term care is one of the largest financial risks facing individuals and families in retirement (AARP Foundation, 2023). Family caregivers face a massive, often hidden, economic burden, with unpaid care in the US valued at over $1 trillion annually (2024), equivalent to 49.5 billion hours of care (Carter, 2026). Caregivers, particularly women, frequently spend an average of over $7,000 annually out-of-pocket while managing reduced income from lost, reduced work hours, and diminished retirement savings.

In Ghana, Nortey, Aryeetey, Aikins and Amendah (2017) found that about 78% of the family caregivers in the study reported a high level of caregiving burden with females reporting a relatively higher level than males. Again, about 87% of the family caregivers reported a high level of financial stress as a result of caregiving for their elderly relative.

Their study shows that support/caregiving for elderly populations imposes economic burden on families, potentially influencing the economic position of families with attendant implications for equity and future family support for such vulnerable populations. However, family caregiving duties are often unremunerated and their care-related economic burden is often overlooked.

These facts are corroborated by Kyei-Arthur (2017) who noted in his studies that family caregiving to the elderly care recipients posed financial, physical, social, and psychological challenges to caregivers. Family caregivers employed strategies such as praying, adaptation, perseverance and optimism, among others to cope with their caregiving challenges. Family caregivers derived rewards from providing care to their elderly care recipients and these rewards include: gifts, blessing, honour, and asset, among others.

The Role of Organisations in Support of Caregiving

Caregivers must primarily take care of themselves through intentional self-care, setting boundaries, and seeking support to avoid burnout as they are often faced with depression, anxiety, and physical ailments, making it vital to proactively manage their own well-being to continue providing care. Organisations have a role to play in supporting caregivers.

This is crucial since many of these caregiving women especially also need to work to provide for the family and it is critical that policies are implemented that support access to affordable, quality care services, to alleviate this burden and enable women to engage in other activities.

Family Caregiver Alliance have recommended six (6) practices that employers can adopt. For instance, they suggest that employers adopt a policy valuing caregiver employees based on job performance rather than holding them to outdated assumptions that they are not committed to their jobs. They are to allow workplace flexibility, which provides alternate work arrangements such as flex-time, compressed workweeks part-time or working fewer hours for part of the year, and telecommuting.

Additionally, researchers suggest the need to do away with no-fault absenteeism policies that provide termination based on number of absences no matter the reason, provide education and training to supervisors and managers about having caregivers on the job and what constitutes caregiver discrimination, offer eldercare support, resources, and referral services to caregiver employees and to implement recruitment practices for persons with eldercare responsibilities to target the hiring of skilled caregiver individuals (Williams et al., 2012).

A 2011 Gallup poll suggests that employers should provide the following: employee assistance plan to promote discussions about emotional distress experienced by the working caregivers, access to health counselors or others to make referrals and give advice about assisted living or nursing home (Gallup-Healthways, 2011), and additional policy proposals preventing workplace discrimination against employees with caregiving responsibilities (National Alliance for Caregiving and AARP, 2015).

Kyei-Arthur (2017) in his study also suggested that family caregivers should be counselled by health professionals about the stressful nature of caregiving, how to deal with their elderly care recipients and helped to identify effective stress coping strategies.

Organisations must provide this support. In addition, governments and organisations should create programmes to help people prepare for old age. Caregivers need better support from policy makers, organisations and communities to keep them fit for the gendered role they play.

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