Nightingales Trust completed its walk from Kolar to Bangalore to create awareness about dementia on the occasion of World Alzheimer's Day. Other cities in India also need to create awareness about dementia and support systems for the patients and their families. Read more about the walk here.

I was reading an interview with Ms. Jennifer Block, 49, a Buddhist chaplain who is is helping develop a new, Zen-inspired senior living community in Florida. She says, “Caregiving can be really gratifying. It’s an expression of our values and identity: the way we want the world to be. So, I try to teach people how this role benefits them. Such as learning what it’s like to be old. Or having a close, intimate relationship with an older parent for the first time in decades. It isn’t necessarily pleasant or easy.” Those who are facing such situations may read the article here.

Caregiving can also bring a lot of stress. Caregivers need to understand this and plan for it. They need to understand that they may need to structure their time, and sometimes lives around the caregiving tasks. I sometimes feel that it is like the time and energy which necessarily needs to be put aside for children, where their activities need the involvement and time of a parent. However there are many salient differences which I will devote an entire article to later.

The point is that caregiving should not be taken lightly by those who are primary caregiver, they need to plan and manage the lives of their charges and their own! The latter sometimes soes not happen and the resultant stress affects the tasks. Others in the family should also understand the enormity of the issue and provide support, not just helping out where possible, but providing emotional support too. Help in care taking, help that would make the caregiver’s day easier, or just acknowledgement that a great job is being done!

The study of the biological, psychological, and sociological aspects of aging is called gerontology. Doctors who treat older people are called geriatricians. However both these are not sufficient to provide support to the growing number of older people in our society. If you think that working with older people is for you, check out this list of careers. There’s something here for all levels of education and for people with varied interests.

The obvious careers that come to mind are those where medicine & nursing are specialized for older people. People providing everyday care for elders and advising them about their medications. But there are many more requirements in other fields where one can specialize in providing services to the elderly.

For a detailed list of careers check out the list here.