Four Warning Signs Your Elderly Parents Need Help at Home

elderly living alone warning signs

Here in the Philippines, it’s common for elderly parents to live with their children. However, there are also still instances when elderly parents or relatives live in their own homes. Some may be regularly visited by family members. However, we can’t deny that there are others who may feel isolated and lonely.

If you are one of those who have aging parents or relatives living on their own, you may have seen things in their homes that got you concerned. Do your observations check out with these below?

elderly living alone warning signs

4 Warning Signs Your Elderly Parents Need Help at Home.

1. Personal Care. Your elderly parents may be neglecting personal care, hygiene, and grooming. For example, they could avoid bathing for fear of slipping and falling. They may also have discomfort due to increased sensitivity or joint pain, which makes bathing and other personal care activities harder than they were. When your elderly parents are unable to attend to these basic grooming and personal care tasks, then it should be a cause of concern.

In fact, lack of personal hygiene and grooming may also result to loss of self-esteem, as well as isolation and reluctance to socialize. Poor self-care may also lead to health problems, such as dry skin, irritated skin, or even urinary tract infections.

2. Unpaid bills and neglected mail and other financial matters. When you see your seniors neglecting their bills or being forgetful about financial matters, this is also a red flag. They may have overdue bills, which may result to services and utilities being cut. They may even have credit card debts piling up.

Furthermore, this apathy towards financial matters may even result to identity theft or their credit card information being stolen and used by enterprising strangers or even loved ones.

3. General clutter in the home or in their personal space. Have you noticed a hoarding behavior in your seniors? This may start out first as their way of keeping in touch with the past or holding onto things with sentimental value. However, this can progress into full-on hoarding, where they would refuse to throw away things, even those that are considered to be generally trash.

Eventually, this behavior of clutter and hoarding may pose an issue in mobility and sanitation. Your elderly parents may have a hard time navigating through their homes and may even hurt themselves from all the clutter.

It’s important to note this general clutter and hoarding behavior as it may signal depression and even mental illness.

4. Mismanaged medication. Now this last part can be highly dangerous. Have you noticed your elderly loved ones having mountains of medicine at home? Are these medicines current? A big problem with an elderly loved one living alone is that they may take improper dosages, expired medicine, or take medicine that’s different from their condition.

Your elderly parent may find their health conditions getting worse or becoming exacerbated. Additionally, they may have new ones just because there’s no one there watching over the medicines they are taking.

Be there for the changes

The senior years can bring many changes to your parents or loved ones. They may encounter things a new and different way, and these can be overwhelming for them, especially if they live on their own.

While you may want to be there for them, you have your own life to live. You may care for them, but you find yourself being tugged towards all different directions because of the different demands in your life.

You know what–Blessed Home is here. We can help care for your elderly loved ones by welcoming them into our facility. Our place is a safe, private, and warm environment where they can enjoy structured and varied activities as well as get a chance to socialize. Contact us today to schedule a visit to see it for yourself.

Join the conversation