Former first lady Rosalynn Carter has been diagnosed with dementia, the Carter Center announced Tuesday, more than three months after her husband, former president Jimmy Carter, said he was spending his final days in hospice care.
“She continues to live happily at home with her husband, enjoying spring in Plains and visits with loved ones,” the organization said in a statement.
Carter, who was hailed by the organization as “the nation’s leading mental health advocate for much of her life,” frequently talked about caregiving before, during and after her time with her husband in the White House.
“The universality of caregiving is clear in our family, and we are experiencing the joy and the challenges of this journey,” the Carter Center said. “We do not expect to comment further and ask for understanding for our family and for everyone across the country serving in a caregiver role.”
The center, a nonprofit human rights organization that the Carters founded in 1982, is the main channel for Carter family statements.
Jimmy Carter announced in February that he would be in home hospice care after several brief hospital stays. No illness was disclosed. The 39th president has overcome serious health problems, including in 2015 when he was diagnosed with melanoma that had spread to his liver and brain. Doctors said he defied the odds, and Carter announced later that year that he was cancer-free following treatment.
Friends and associates have said the health of Rosalynn and Jimmy Carter, who were in the White House from 1977 to 1981, has been in gradual decline in recent months. She uses a walker to get around, while he uses a wheelchair. But the couple have remained in good spirits during a stretch in which many have given public tributes to the former president.
“They’re just meeting with family right now, but they’re doing it in the best possible way: the two of them together at home,” grandson Jason Carter told the Associated Press last week. “They’ve been together 70-plus years. They also know that they’re not in charge. Their faith is really grounding in this moment. In that way, it’s as good as it can be.”
More than 55 million people worldwide are living with dementia, according to the World Health Organization. A study published in October found that about 1 in 10 adults in the U.S. ages 65 or older has dementia. Researchers at Columbia University found in the study that the rate of dementia and mild cognitive impairment rises sharply with age. The rate of dementia among American adults in their 90s jumps to 35 percent, data shows.
Years after her husband left the White House, the former first lady founded the Rosalynn Carter Institute for Caregiving at her alma mater, Georgia Southwestern State University, in 1987. Rosalynn Carter helped open the institute 36 years ago to address issues related to caregiving in the United States and around the world.
The issue of caregiving has been one of the biggest topics in her public life. Carter has often spoken about how she was 12 years old when her father became terminally ill with leukemia, and she was thrust into a caregiver position to help her mother. Carter also has talked about caring for her mother until she died in 2000 at 94.
The former first lady has often said there are four kinds of people in the world: “those who have been caregivers, those who are currently caregivers, those who will be caregivers, and those who will need caregivers.”
“We recognize, as she did more than half a century ago, that stigma is often a barrier that keeps individuals and their families from seeking and getting much-needed support,” the Carter Center said in Tuesday’s statement. “We hope sharing our family’s news will increase important conversations at kitchen tables and in doctor’s offices around the country.”
The Carters’ marriage, the longest in presidential history, has been praised for its strength and longevity. In July, the couple will celebrate their 77th anniversary.
In a 2021 Washington Post profile of the couple, the former president recalled the night in 1945 when he knew Rosalynn Smith was the one. The morning after their first date, Jimmy Carter’s mother asked him how he thought it went.
“She’s the one I’m going to marry,” he said. It was a moment that Rosalynn Carter said she didn’t know about until years later.
News of Rosalynn Carter’s dementia diagnosis led many, including former PBS “NewsHour” anchor Judy Woodruff, to praise her for “the lifetime of advocacy for those w/mental illness & need for greater transparency in discussing it.” Presidential historian Michael Beschloss lauded Carter as “a magnificent champion for mental health in America for a half century.”
“Thinking of and praying for First Lady Rosalynn Carter and for President Carter during these tough and tender times,” wrote Sen. Raphael G. Warnock (D-Ga.). “So grateful for their continuing example of service and sacrifice.”
Paige Alexander, CEO of the Carter Center, thanked Rosalynn Carter “for helping to build a ‘more caring society.’”
“Thank you, Mrs. Carter, for teaching us life lessons as you age so gracefully,” she said.
