Caregiver Angst

Caregivers are relied on by those physically/mentally disabled that they take care of and are paid to help with daily tasks. Over time, they might find themselves unintentionally overworking themselves and constantly rushing to get the job done, to the point of mental and physical exhaustion. A caregiver may enter a job with enthusiasm and willingness, only to think about changing their minds once the burnout sets in. They may question their sanity, start fights with the person(s) they're caregiving for, and contemplate quitting and seeking out someone else to care for the person they were responsible for in the first place. Caregivers suffering from burnout may feel both relief from being rid of their duties to their patient and feel guilty for expressing how much they loathe their excessive job in caring for another person without fulfilling their own needs too. The worst of the angst takes place when the caregiver happens to be related to the disabled person they're caring for.

This is Truth in Television, as caregiver fatigue or caregiver burnout occurs when the caregiver feels emotionally and physically exhausted, often leading to a change in attitude. Negative feelings toward the job and the care recipient often accompany the mental state, sometimes including feelings of resentment.

The stress upon the caregiver is often an actual worry for people receiving care and can cause them to apologize to their caretaker for taking up their time, or in worse cases, their disability, injury, or requirement to need care in the first place. This guilt may cause Apologizes a Lot for patients.

In worse scenarios, it may lead to self-destructive behaviors like obscuring their ailments, lying about physical/mental conditions, and purposefully not taking medication on time in an effort to avoid "causing problems" to their caregiver—a practice that could easily worsen their health over time or cause a medical emergency especially if suicidal intent or suicidal ideation is involved.

No one is a burden just because they need care, and it is not inherently selfish or shameful for a caregiver to become exhausted. Many Real Life cases encourage caregivers to reach out to employers, therapists, healthcare providers, certain types of social workers, and other outside forces to help alleviate the stress on both sides by negotiating shifts or removing someone (perhaps even both the caregiver and the recipient) from an abusive or stressful environment.

Differs from Collateral Angst because the person's angst comes from the caregiving itself, though they can overlap.

The burnout may be caused by Sleep Deprivation. Can lead to My God, What Have I Done?, Identity Breakdown, Empty Shell, Loss of Identity, Exhaustion-Induced Idiocy, and Post-Stress Overeating depending on the situation. Compare Badly Battered Babysitter, for a more specific example specifically relating to child care. Compare Ailment-Induced Cruelty, Acquired Situational Narcissism, Chronic Hero Syndrome, Disabled Snarker, Bullying the Disabled, Evil Cripple, Disability as an Excuse for Jerkassery, Screw Politeness, I'm a Senior!, The Load, Resentful Guardian for the parent(s) doing the caregiving, Promotion to Parent and Adoptive Peer Parent if they're siblings which may result in Sibling Rivalry and Cain and Abel outcome, and Annoying Patient where the caregiver would be fully justified in leaving. The nastiest examples of this trope convince themselves that their struggles as a caregiver are more important than those of the people they care for, and may wind up Abandoning The Disabled or worse.

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Examples

Comic Books

• Fury (MAX) has Nick promise to look after Wendel, a dead teammate's son. Unfortunately, Wendel is a weird loser who gives himself a massive hernia trying to lift weights, requiring a wheelchair and later a (leaking) colostomy bag. During a trip to the zoo, Fury daydreams about pushing Wendel's wheelchair into a tiger pit to free himself from looking after him. He nearly murders Wendel as he sleeps (even calling it a Mercy Kill) but can't bring himself to do it.

Film — Animation

• In the Midquel Bambi II, Bambi is orphaned after losing his mother and he is found by his father The Great Prince who leads him to a safe shelter. After this, The Great Prince discusses with Friend Owl who could care for Bambi. Friend Owl notes that it's winter, food is scarce and the does can barely feed themselves and their own offspring and suggests that the Great Prince take care of Bambi himself. The Great Prince is hesitant and reluctant to step into the role of caregiver for his own son as the males don't get involved emotionally with their offspring's lives and their primary role is to keep watch over the forest and keep everyone safe. Over time, The Great Prince's patience wears thin as Bambi's playfulness and reckless endangerment get in the way of his job and nearly get them both killed. The Great Prince keeps asking Friend Owl to find a suitable doe for to care for Bambi as a foster mother. Ironically, the Great Prince starts to develop genuine fatherly love for his son Bambi and the two begin bonding just as Owl arrives with Bambi's new foster mother Meena.
• In Lilo & Stitch, after the untimely death of their parents, Nani Palakai became a caregiver, parental figure, and foster parent to her naive little sister Lilo. Throughout the film, Nani struggles to keep Lilo from being taken away by social services by maintaining rules and a clean house and holding down various odd jobs with a steady income. Both girls struggle with the loss, as Nani suddenly has to run a household, raise a child, and afford for them both to survive. As a result, the two often butt heads, although their sisterly love always wins in the end.
• Toy Story 4: When Bonnie creates Forky, an arts-and-crafts project that comes to life, Woody, who desperately wants a place in Bonnie's life, makes it his mission to make sure nothing happens to him. This proves easier said than done since all Forky wants to do is throw himself in the garbage (because that's what he's made of). Woody ends up all but tired from his constant vigilantism, but he still chooses to stick to his guns despite Buzz's offer to help.
  Woody: I know you weren't around when Andy was little, but... I don't remember it being this hard.
  Buzz: Want me to take the next watch? We'll keep an eye on Forky.
  Woody: No, no, I need to do this. That little voice inside me would never leave me alone if I gave up.

Films — Live-Action

• In Alvin and the Chipmunks, Dave Seville becomes a caregiver to three orphaned talking chipmunks who can sing. He tries to care for them as best as he can, but eventually his life gets out of control by the chipmunks' antics. Costing him his possible reconciliation with his ex Claire and one of his jobs. He eventually writes a note detailing how could he possibly care for the three young chipmunks when he can barely manage his own life and that he is sorry it has to be that way. Only a week later Theodore finds the crumpled-up note and due to a Third-Act Misunderstanding, believed Dave no longer wanted them and the chipmunks move in with Dave's former friend and eventual nemesis Ian Hawk.
• In Away from Her, a husband finds his wife gradually losing her memory to Alzheimer's and has her checked into a nursing home. To his surprise, his wife has forgotten all about him and has turned her affection instead to a mute patient who is her new coping buddy.
• In Bitter Moon, Mimi and Oscar have a volatile relationship prior to her becoming a caregiver to her husband when he became physically disabled due to drunkenly stepping in front of a moving vehicle and fracturing his femur. Mimi takes advantage of her caregiver role as a means to get back at her abusive spouse. When Mimi visits Oscar in the hospital, she shakes hands with him, then pulls him out of his bed and leaves him hanging in his traction device. Having become paraplegic, Oscar had no choice but to let Mimi move in with him again and take care of him. Mimi then reveled in dominating and humiliating Oscar, seducing men in front of him. When Oscar was desperate and wanted to die, she gave him a gun as a birthday present. Ironically, having experienced highs and lows together, the toxic pair realized how they needed each other and actually got married.
• In The Black Dahlia, a subplot involves officer Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert caring for his elderly Alzheimer's ridden father until he is able to afford to put his father into a nursing home.
• In Crash (2005), one bit involves a bigoted police officer named Sargent John Ryan struggling to take care of his elderly father who suffers from a bladder infection.
• In Creepshow, Aunt Bedelia is stuck in the role of her abusive father Nathan's care provider and is in misery throughout, made due to the fact that her father murdered her beau just to keep Bedelia on as his caregiver. It isn't until Nathan calls Bedelia a bitch for not bringing him his cake does Bedelia finally snap and kill him with a marble ashtray.
• In the 2020 drama Dangerous Lies, after losing her waitressing job, Katie Franklin (Camila Mendes) takes a job as a caretaker to a wealthy elderly man in his sprawling, empty Chicago estate. The two grow close, but when he unexpectedly passes away and names Katie as his sole heir, she and her husband Adam are pulled into a complex web of lies, deception, and murder. If she wants to survive, Katie will have to question everyone's motives — even the people she loves.
• In the drama film The Descendants shows a man struggling to raise his rebellious teen and pre-teen daughters all by himself after their mother becomes brain dead due to a boating accident and her infidelity comes to light.
• In the film I Never Sang for My Father (1970), after his mother's death, Gene Garrison is left in charge of his father, who is losing his memory. He then debates with his sister, Alice, about whether they should put him in a nursing home or not.
• In Jersey Girl, after the untimely death of his wife through childbirth and the loss of his job, Ollie Trinkie has to relocate and take up residence in his father Bart's house and take care of both his father and newborn daughter Gertie. Seven years pass and he has grown bitter and miserable about his home life and constantly missing his old job in New York. He eventually lets loose how he really feels during an argument with his daughter about moving to New York and immediately regrets it afterwards.
• Love Actually: Sarah has spent years pining after her co-worker Karl. When she finally gets a chance to be with him, however, she is repeatedly interrupted by calls from her mentally ill brother Michael. Karl, instead of being understanding of the situation, gives up on a relationship with Sarah because Sarah refuses to ignore Michael's calls. While this upsets Sarah, she still happily, if bittersweetly, spends her Christmas with Michael, and never takes it out on him. In the Comic Relief special "Red Nose Day Actually", Sarah is shown to have found love with another (played by Patrick Dempsey no less) 10 years after the fact, who does appreciate that she never ignores a call.
• In the film based upon Jojo Moyes's novel Me Before You, young and quirky Louisa "Lou" Clark (Emilia Clarke) moves from one job to the next to help her family make ends meet. Her cheerful attitude is put to the test when she becomes a caregiver for Will Traynor (Sam Claflin), a wealthy young banker left paralyzed from an accident two years earlier. Will's cynical outlook starts to change when Louisa shows him that life is worth living.
• In Monster's Ball, corrections officer Hank Grotowski puts up with his racist senile abusive father Buck but it isn't until Buck nearly jeopardizes his relationship with Leticia does Hank finally decide to leave Buck in a nursing home.
• In No Reservations (2007), when top chef Kate's sister Christine is killed in a car accident, her 9-year-old niece Zoe must move in with her. Kate is devastated by her sister's death and with all of her new problems.
• In the 1980s film Nothing in Common, a glib Chicago ad exec's (Tom Hanks) parents split up, forcing him to take sole responsibility for his diabetes-stricken dad (Jackie Gleason).
• In the 2022 horror film Pearl, the protagonist Pearl's father is paralyzed from an unspecified disease that leaves him only able to move his eyes and swallow while still very much alive and his wife Ruth has to care for him. During a family dinner, Ruth and her daughter Pearl get into an argument over Pearl's unhelpfulness around the farm, during which Ruth lets slip how much of a burden she feels caring for her husband is and how much she hates him in his condition, all the while threatening to slit his throat. The fight becomes physical between mother and daughter, resulting in Ruth getting pushed into a fireplace and suffering fatal third-degree burns. Pearl also openly resents her wheelchair-bound father and threatens to feed him to an alligator at one point. Pearl continues to physically abuse and ridicule her father before eventually suffocating him. Relieved to be rid of both of her parents for her chance at stardom.
  Ruth: You don't know what I could do to you. I shoulder a burden that you'll never understand, spend my days feeding and wiping the snot off the face of the man I married. You DARE sit there and talk to me about regret? I was supposed to be his wife, not his mother! Don't you EVER speak that way to me again! Do you hear me? (grabs the knife off the table) Here! Take it! That's what you really desire, isn't it? Perhaps I shall kill him for you? That way you won't have to care for him any longer. Would that suit your selfish dreams better? Then we both can go out to the dance audition! Your husband is gone, so is mine! Why should we settle with caring for them or the work on this farm? WHAT ABOUT US GETTING WHAT WE WANT?
• In Power Rangers (2017), Zack absolutely and 100% completely adores his mother and it's made very clear they have an extremely loving relationship between the two. It's subtly hinted that she might also be something of a Morality Chain and Only Friend for him, considering that at least before he met the other Rangers. As Zack's expresses distress towards his mother's illness and the two of them living in a run-down trailer, he somberly states that when she dies he'll have "no one". Which is why he openly states that his budding friendship with the rangers will be "good for me".
• In Raising Helen, After her sister and brother-in-law die in a car accident, a young woman named Helen Harris becomes the guardian of their three children. She tries to do it on her own terms, which means raising them while maintaining her already fast-paced schedule. But as work and children begin to interfere, Helen quickly finds herself burnt out and disheartened by her responsibilities and Jenny's lack of faith.
• In the film Robot and Frank (2012), an elderly retired con man slowly succumbing to boredom and Alzheimer's is given a living assistance robot by his son Hunter to help him live day to day.
• In the 2007 film The Savages (not to be confused with the 2012 film of similar name), a reluctant sister (Laura Linney) and brother (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) face the realities of familial responsibility as they begin to care for their ailing father who slides into senility and must be placed in a nursing home.
• In the drama film Silver Linings Playbook, Pat Solitano, Jr. (Bradley Cooper) was admitted to a mental health facility for bipolar disorder. His mother decided to take her son home against medical advice and without her husband's knowledge. The middle-aged couple faced difficulties dealing with their son's mental illness, until a girl, Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence), who was also battling a mental illness (depression), showed up in Pat's life.
• The Skeleton Key: Caroline is a hospice worker who takes care of Benjamin, an old invalid who is also mute. She starts suspecting that the old man is abused by his wife, who has a weird behavior, and tries to investigate in order to save him. The truth is that he was a victim of Hoodoo who had his mind transferred to that decrepit body. It Makes Sense in Context.
• The Theory of Everything focuses on Jane Hawking's experiences caring for her husband Stephen as he deals with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis. His family warns her that he will be difficult to take care of and that she will burn herself out, and we see her struggle to juggle his care whilst she's pursuing her own work and taking care of the family. Not helping matters is when a new man named Jonathan comes into her life and she is accused of having an affair with him. In the end, though, she sticks by her husband and the relationship ends when he runs off with his nurse.
• We Need to Talk About Kevin: Eva and Franklin hire an extremely kind babysitter, Siobhan, to look after Kevin in his baby-toddler stage. He drives her completely insane with constant screaming, crying, and apparent psychological warfare that she is left a Broken Bird and tells Eva she no longer wants to have children.
• The Whale: Charlie's only friend, Liz, is also a professional nurse, and she's endlessly frustrated by his refusal to take care of himself despite her literally begging him to go to a hospital. Oddly, she still provides Charlie with the enormous amounts of junk food he eats (he's over 600 pounds), but it's implied that she does it because she doesn't know what else she can do since he won't change his ways.
• In the drama film What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, the younger sister Jane has to care for her paraplegic older sister Blanche. Worth knowing that Jane was responsible for Blanche ending up in a wheelchair in the first place and spends the majority of the film gaslighting, abusing, and guilt-tripping her sister.
• In Would You Rather (2012), Iris (Brittany Snow) who, after their parents died, has to raise her brother who also has leukemia. In order to afford his care, she puts her life in jeopardy to help him. While at this dinner party, Iris has to decide just how long she can be selfless before she, herself, will die.

Literature

• The Almost Moon: Helen cares for her bitter, abusive, narcissistic mother who has severe dementia and agoraphobia. After being pushed too far by a lifetime of abuse and then having to care for her mother in the present day, Helen smothers her mother to death.
• In the novel Still Alice, 50-year-old Alice Howard is a Harvard professor who has early onset Alzheimer's disease, and as she declines, she has to grapple with a new way of living, and so does her family as they care for her.
• In the fifth (in terms of chronology) Anne of Green Gables book, Anne's House of Dreams, we meet Leslie. She had to marry the brutish Dick Moore to save her mother. Too bad her mother quickly died and Dick got injured in a barfight, reducing his mentality to that of a child. If he hadn't gotten injured maybe she could've divorced him, but now she's trapped as his caregiver. And the worst part is that this is still better than the prior status quo, being married to an alcoholic monster.
• In Stephen King's Dolores Claiborne, during the last years of her life, Vera Donovan devolves into a helpless bed-ridden old woman frequently hallucinating about "dust bunnies". Her only source of joy ends up being intentionally defecating her bed in order to make her caretaker, Dolores, clean it up.
• In The Haunting of Hill House: Nell Crain has this experience after her mother, for whom she was caring, has already died. Nell has spent decades caring for her mother and seeing the world pass her by, and as a result, she's lonely, awkward, and aware of how much of life she's missed, or in her estimation, wasted.
• Kate Hamill's theatrical adaptation of Little Women includes a scene where Meg has a comedic breakdown in front of Jo over the stress of being a mother to twins, having run back home to talk to Marmie and feel like a little girl again. To her credit, however, once her husband John finds her and consoles her, she picks herself up and goes back to being "the Marmie":
  Meg: But today — today! They finally took a nap at the same time and it was so quiet and I sat and thought, what if I could have anything I wished in the world right now? And I thought I want — all I want is... JAM. [she sobs] So I tore through our cupboards, and I found some dusty old pot of raspberry and ate it right out of the jar, like a child, and was happy for one moment [...] And then JUST THEN like she SENSED it, Daisy woke up and started wailing and that woke Demi and HE started wailing and then I should have gone and picked them up, but then I just couldn't, I started wailing and that's how John found me, crying and covered with jam with the babies screaming in their nursery.
• Subverted in My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!. Many in Sorcier's high society assume this of Nicol, due to him spending lots of effort in maintaining his albino sister Sophia's well-being. What is the most visible to them is him trying to suppress all the discrimination against Sophia, and he also has to handle her emotional needs; at one point she refused to leave her room for years owing to the aforementioned discrimination was too much for her to handle. However, to Nicol, it's just Big Brother Instinct, and he's extremely disdainful of people seeing his situation as unfortunate, or seeing Sophia as a burden on him.
• Parahumans
  • In Worm the stress of being the world's most powerful healer with no secret identity and feeling an obligation to use her power even at her own expense eats away at Panacea, AKA Amy Dallon. This is one of the several elements that eventually leads to her eventual psychotic break and the mutilation and sexual assault of her sister Glory Girl AKA Victoria Dallon.
  • The highly effective therapist Jessica Yamada feels the pressure of trying to care for the mental health of some of the world's most powerful parahumans in a world where nearly all superpowers are gained through intense psychological trauma. She's already a bit worn down in Worm but it begins to really hit her in Ward and she begins making mistakes that have consequences for her and her patients.

Live-Action TV

• In the final season of The Americans, Elizabeth's latest mission sees her posing as a nurse for Erica, the terminally ill wife of a State Department negotiator, so that she can gather intelligence about the husband's negotiations. Erica's deep bitterness and probing questions wear the usually-stoic Elizabeth down emotionally, and then an attempt by the husband to give Erica a merciful death (via a morphine overdose) goes awry, forcing Elizabeth to step in and finish the job herself. In the end, Elizabeth is left utterly distraught by the experience; when the husband offers her a portrait that Erica made as a parting gift, Elizabeth takes it home and burns it, both because she can't afford to risk anyone recognizing Erica's style and because she can't bear to be reminded of the experience.
• In Frasier, Frasier Crane's new life in Seattle is turned upside down when he is asked by his brother Niles to take in their physically disabled father Martin and care for him. Frasier insists he'll be fine but by a few weeks past, he is a miserable nervous wreck who has resorted to drinking double espresso just to calm his nerves and asks Niles if he still has those brochures for nursing homes. During an emotional fight between him and his father Martin, Frasier admits he is overwhelmed with guilt about how he feels but nevertheless took his father in out of love and calls him out for his ungratefulness.
• In the '90s horror Series Ghost Stories, a burnt-out social worker takes it upon herself to help out a former Wall Street whiz kid who suddenly quit his job and missed his appointments with his caseworker by snapping and murdering people, claiming that a demon made him do it. The new social worker's efforts to get through to the young man are futile and by the end, she herself becomes so lost from burn-out and the trauma of nearly being killed that she snaps and murders her husband, thanks to the same demon that once tormented the Wall Street kid now tormenting the social worker as its new host.
• In the ninth season of Grey's Anatomy, Callie Torres has to deal with the constant caretaking for her then-wife Arizona Robbins after Arizona had her leg amputated from the plane crash. Over time, Arizona blames Callie for amputating her leg (despite the fact Callie did so to save her life), deliberately ignores her, lashes out at her emotionally, and throws objects at the homecare nurse that Callie hired to take care of her. When Arizona fires the homecare nurse and falls to the floor, failing to reach the toilet and urinating on herself, Callie reaches her limits and calls out Arizona on her impulsivity and foolishness. Arizona then snaps and blames Callie for her amputated state, telling her "you did this to me!". Finally, Callie pushes the stubborn Arizona into the shower to clean her up and then she finally breaks down crying. Saying to Arizona "I have nowhere else to go! This is my life too!". When suffering from phantom limb syndrome, Arizona confessed to Alex that she hadn't told Callie, as she wanted to be Callie's wife again after having been her patient for so long. Their marriage only gets strained from there, as Arizona continues to blame Callie for both the loss of her leg and her miscarriage, and eventually cheats on Callie with another doctor.
• How I Met Your Mother: In "Band or DJ?", Lily confesses to Ted that she is guilty of sometimes wishing she wasn't a mom, even though she loves her son, because she had to give up any chance of an art career to support her husband and start a family. This leads to her Season 9 plotline where she's given the chance to move to Rome for a year as an art consultant, but is afraid to risk uprooting the family and Marshall's legal career. Marshall encourages her to take the job and moves with her to Rome, lightening her burden.
• In Lodge 49, Dud's erstwhile boss (and one-time love interest) Gloria has an elderly mother whom she's stuck caring for, which is one of the reasons she's stuck in a dead-end job in the economically-depressed suburb of Long Beach. She's reached the point where she openly wishes her mother would just die so that she can get on with her life.
• Monk: After the trauma caused by the murder of his wife, Adrian Monk was stuck in his house for three years, until he was convinced to go out and start working as a detective thanks to his nurse/assistant Sharona. It's not easy for her to take care of a man with obsessive-compulsive personality disorder, and Monk's lack of empathy frequently makes Sharona mad, as much as she cares about him (although Monk himself later admits that her brand of Tough Love was necessary to get his recovery started; as he puts it, she saved him from drowning). She is replaced by Natalie Teeger in the third season, who has a sweeter, patient personality.
• Pushing Daisies: In "Corpsicle", the killer's motivation falls along these lines. Madeline spends her time caring for littlest cancer patients as part of the Wish-a-Wish Foundation, but finds her patience tested by apathetic heart patient Abner Newsome, whose only wish is for the insurance adjusters refusing his heart transplant request to drop dead. Madeline, driven up the wall by Abner's Jerkass behavior, takes this a bit too literally.
• This Is Going To Hurt thrives on this. Based on a real memoir, Adam works in an NHS-funded obstetrics and gynecology ward dealing with childbirth, and by the time the series occurs, he is well past burned out, being blunt and reckless with both patients and staff and using Black Comedy to deal with the stress. His demanding job puts a strain on his relationships, and he references the high suicide rates among doctors in general after his junior doctor trainee Shruti kills herself.
• In an early season of The Waltons, the family receives a visit from John's cousin Corabeth, whose mother has recently died. Corabeth has spent her entire adult life acting as caregiver for both of her parents, and now that they're gone, she's fragile. Shopkeeper neighbor Ike falls hard for Corabeth and wants to marry her, but she confides in Olivia that she's afraid because she doesn't know how to live life for herself. They do marry by the end of the episode, though, and over the course of the series, there are several episodes that show Corabeth growing as a person.
• In the TLC documentary series My 600 Lb Life, this is a recurring theme in the series alongside child sexual abuse as a Freudian Excuse for food addiction. Several morbidly obese patients pity their caretakers and wish they could give them a normal life instead of having them tend to their every need.

Radio

• Hope for the Caregiver with Peter Rosenberger is a faith-based program that addresses burnout and offers hope, support, advice, and care for caregivers to maintain and feel supported.

Theatre

• Next to Normal: Dan is not only father to teenaged Natalie, but also struggling to deal with his wife Diane's worsening bipolar depression and their prolonged grief over the death of their first child, Gabriel. His struggle to stay strong and bottle up his own emotions in the face of this is what actually pushes Diane away from him by the end to deal with the grief on her own, at which point he finally agrees to go to therapy himself. He describes his angst multiple times in song, with "I've Been" being the biggest example:

But I'm weary to the bone.
And whenever she goes flying,
I keep my feet right on the ground.
Oh, now I need a lift,
And there's no one around.

• 'night, Mother: The pressure of caregiving for her mother Thelma is a major contributing factor to Jessie's mental state.
• In Angels in America, Louis Ironson finds himself becoming a caregiver to his boyfriend Prior Walter after he's diagnosed with AIDs... and given that Louis has already walked out on his ailing grandmother due to being unable to cope with watching her die, he quickly finds himself in over his head. At first, he tries to play along with Prior's attempts to live a relatively normal life despite all the drugs he needs just to say functional, but once Prior begins exhibiting life-threatening symptoms and has to be hospitalized, Louis' resolve fails him. After spending several scenes struggling to cope with his guilt and self-loathing, Louis walks out on Prior altogether — then starts a new relationship with Joe Pitt.

Video Games

• Firewatch opens with a halfway-interactive account of Henry's courtship of and marriage to Julia and of his wife's early and sudden onset of dementia. In the story branches where the player lets Henry take care of Julia on his own, he quickly burns out and takes up a job as a fire lookout in Shoshone National Forest to escape (after leaving Julia under professional care or with her family). The fact that he neglects his caregiver obligations haunts Henry throughout the entire game.

Visual Novels

• In the hentai Yosuga no Sora, 17-year-old Haruka is tasked with caregiving for his sick younger twin sister Sora after both their parents died. Over time, Haruka becomes conflicted, not just because he has to care for his sick sister, but because he is disturbed by his sister's incestuous love towards him and his own feelings of growing sexual attraction towards her which he feels very guilty about. He doesn't do anything until after getting a call from his grandmother, who encourages them to move in with her, and if he doesn't want to that, he can at least send Sora so she won't be a burden to him.

Web Original

• SCP Foundation: Dr Magdaleno ends up becoming an unofficial caretaker to SCP-7955, a shapeshifter with an advancing case of dementia. Though the two of them start out as friends, Magdaleno's composure is stretched to the limit as 7955's condition grows more and more debilitating, subjecting the researcher to stress, abuse, paranoid threats, physical violence, and the heartbreak of watching 7955 being slowly reduced to a Perpetually Protean Empty Shell. By the end, Magdaleno is left so depressed that he can only wonder why the O5 Council haven't reassigned him for his failure to remain objective — if only because it would spare him the guilt of requesting a transfer and abandoning his friend.

Western Animation

• In Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, episode "Tails' New Home", after rescuing Tails from yet another instance of Dr. Robotnik's robots, a worried Sonic decides it is now best for Tails to be left safe from constant danger in a new foster home. After many terrible interviews with potential foster parents, Sonic finds Tails a home via a reunion with his biological parents and goes on his way. However, Sonic immediately feels wracked with guilt and sadness over leaving Tails behind as he has grown to be attached to the little guy as an older brother/parental guardian figure. Thankfully, Sonic changes his mind and comes to his senses, and returns to take Tails back home with him. Good timing, since it turns out that the biological fox "parents" were actually Dr. Robotnik's robots in disguise (and Sonic realized they had called Tails by the nickname Sonic had given him, rather than his birth name of Miles).
• Family Guy:
  • In "Stewie Loves Lois", Stewie grows overly attached to Lois after she repairs his ruined teddy bear. Lois enjoys it at first, but she soon gets exhausted from him wanting to be around her all the time, and she is soon horrified when she starts dreaming about killing Stewie.
  • A running gag for Bonnie Swanson being that she was once happily married to Joe but over time got tired of having to take care of him due to his being paraplegic and eventually Bonnie had numerous affairs and contemplated killing her husband. In "The Heartbreak Dog", Bonnie reveals she planned to do so much in her life but had to put it all down to look after Joe. She confides with Brian about this and they share a passionate kiss in which after they attempt to run off to achieve everything they have dreamed of. In "Brian the Closer" she chooses a house that specifically leans on its foundation toward a sheer cliff with a sliding glass door. When Joe becomes completely paralyzed in "Brokeback Swanson", she leaves him to go to Europe.
• Played for Black Comedy in an episode of South Park where Mrs. Cartman enlists different nannies to try and make her son Eric behave, only to watch as he wears down the first two; the second nanny ends up so broken that she's confined to a mental hospital, ranting and eating her own feces. Mrs. Cartman has more success after bringing in a dog trainer, who finally brings Eric under control, but as soon as he leaves, Eric's bad behavior comes back with a vengeance, and Mrs. Cartman herself ends up utterly broken by him.

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