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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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| Medicalization of insight and caregivers' responses to risk in dementia | | Author(s) | John Bond, Lynne Corner, Anna Lilley |
| Journal title | Dementia: the international journal of social research and practice, vol 1, no 3, October 2002 |
| Pages | pp 313-328 |
| Keywords | Informal care ; Attitude ; Dementia ; Case studies. |
| Annotation | Lack of insight or impaired awareness of deficit in people with Alzheimer's disease (AD) or other dementia is a relatively neglected area of study. The terms are widely used in professional and everyday life without a shared understanding of what lack of insight means to health professionals, informal caregivers or people with dementia. Comment analysis of 49 psychiatry or psychology texts, in which insight or a synonym is mentioned, found lack of clarity to definitions and their operationalisation. In general, insight is defined as the ability to understand one's own problems. Lack of insight therefore is a professional judgement grounded in the medicalisation of dementia. People labelled as lacking insight of their dementia will consequently experience more acutely depersonalisation, loss of independence, loss of social and political rights, and they will have their behaviour individualised. Caregivers' understanding of the loss of insight may influence the way they deal with risk during caregiving. A case study illustrates the diagnostic label of dementia and the description "lacking insight" on the quality of life of a person with dementia. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-021217206 A |
| Classmark | P6: DP: EA: 69P |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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