Looking After Your Mental Health While Administering End Of Life Care

Helping to administer end of life care for a loved one can be one of the most difficult periods of a person’s life. End of life care can involve medical care and specialised therapies, or it can involve simply facing your last days surrounded by your family and friends. In either case, those who help to administer end of life care can be highly susceptible to severe mental health impacts that come from assisting a person in their final days.

Because of this, looking after your own mental health is absolutely vital for any carers dealing with end of life care. This is necessary for two equally important reasons:

For yourself

Adopting your own self-care and mental health routines and strategies is an important aspect of taking care of yourself while administering end of life care. During this care, especially if you are caring for a loved one, your emotions can become complex, yet you aren’t in an environment where you can express them properly. Ensuring you are able to process these emotions in your own time will help you maintain good mental health.

For your patient

If you are looking after a patient or loved one who is nearing the end of their life, they may need you to be able to carry the weight of their burden. You will need to be able to comfort them, ease their anxieties, and help them process their emotions. These tasks are much more difficult if your own mental health is in disarray, meaning that your self-care is just as important for your patient as it is for you.

If you’re looking for help establishing a healthy mental health routine, try using the following methods to help you organise your self-care:

• Keep to a regular schedule for sleeping and eating.
• Try to get some exercise in if your care routine doesn’t include any.
• Give yourself ‘off’ time to relax.
• Talk through your experiences with a friend or family member who is not involved in the end of life care.
• Take the time to reflect on your own thoughts, feelings, and emotions, in order to process them healthily.

End of life planning can be a difficult and emotionally taxing period for everyone involved, but the stresses of funeral planning can make this so much worse. If you’re looking for a way of reducing the added burden at the time of need then why not consider a low-cost direct cremation with Crystal Cremations.