Caregiving by Condition: Dementia, Stroke, Heart Disease, and More

Caregiving looks different depending on the condition behind it. A dementia caregiver's hardest hours differ from a stroke caregiver's, and each major condition has an organization that has spent decades building resources specifically for families. This guide collects the current numbers and the doors worth knocking on.

Alzheimer's disease and other dementias

More than 7 million Americans are living with Alzheimer's, a number projected to reach nearly 13 million by 2050 — and nearly 13 million Americans already provide unpaid care for a family member or friend with dementia.^[1] In 2025, those caregivers provided more than 19 billion hours of unpaid care valued at more than $446 billion.^[1] One in three older Americans dies with Alzheimer's or another dementia.^[1]

Dementia caregiving is a long arc — the National Institute on Aging calls taking care of yourself one of the most important things you can do as a caregiver, and its condition-specific advice is concrete: ask for help, join a caregiver support group, take daily breaks, keep up hobbies and friendships, see your own doctor regularly, and keep health, legal, and financial information up to date.^[2] Relief options include family and friends, adult day services, and home health agencies.^[2]

Where to start: the Alzheimer's Association 24/7 Helpline (800-272-3900), NIA's Alzheimer's caregiving guides, and the CDC's caregiving hub, which includes a free care-plan template for keeping important information in one place.^[3] See also our guides on communication and care settings.

Stroke

The American Stroke Association is direct about the caregiver's role: as a caregiver, you provide the most important long-term support for your stroke survivor's recovery and rehabilitation.^[4] Stroke caregiving often starts abruptly — one day changes everything — and involves rehabilitation logistics, fall prevention, and financial navigation all at once.

Where to start: the Association's Stroke Family Warmline, its stroke support group finder, and its Caregiver Guide to Stroke, plus focused resources like "15 Things Caregivers Should Know After a Loved One Has Had a Stroke" and "Finances After Stroke."^[4]

Heart disease

Heart disease is the leading cause of death for men, women, and people of most racial and ethnic groups in the United States — in 2023, 919,032 people died from cardiovascular disease, the equivalent of 1 in every 3 deaths.^[5] Coronary heart disease is the most common form, and about 1 in 20 adults age 20 and older have coronary artery disease.^[5] For caregivers this often means managing medications, cardiac-rehab schedules, and diet changes — and watching your own heart health too, since caregiver stress raises cardiovascular risk (see our cholesterol guide).

Parkinson's disease

An estimated 1.1 million people in the U.S. are living with Parkinson's disease, with nearly 90,000 new diagnoses each year — a figure projected to reach 1.2 million by 2030.^[6] Parkinson's caregiving evolves over years as mobility, speech, and cognition change; the Parkinson's Foundation maintains caregiver programs and a helpline alongside its research work.^[6]

Cancer

The American Cancer Society calls caregivers the lifeline of the person with cancer.^[7] Cancer caregiving is often intense but episodic — treatment cycles, scan anxiety, recovery windows. ACS offers a free Caregiver Resource Guide, a caregiver support video series, resources for helping children understand a loved one's cancer, and practical support programs including lodging and transportation assistance.^[7]

Diabetes

Diabetes is frequently the "second diagnosis" in caregiving — present alongside whatever brought you here. Its scale is enormous: 40.1 million people in the U.S. have diabetes — 12% of the population — including about 11 million who don't know it, and 115.2 million adults have prediabetes, including more than half of adults 65 and older.^[8] For caregivers, diabetes usually means daily routine: glucose monitoring, medication timing, meal planning, and foot care, coordinated with the care recipient's medical team.

The thread that runs through all of them

Every condition-specific organization gives caregivers the same core advice this site has carried since 2015: get support early, accept help, and protect your own health. Start with our guides to caregiver stress and self-care — they apply to every diagnosis on this page.