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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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How do older people describe others with cognitive impairment?
— a multiethnic study in the United States | | Author(s) | Sarah B Laditka, James A Laditka, Rui Lui |
| Journal title | Ageing and Society, vol 33, no 3, April 2013 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press, April 2013 |
| Pages | pp 369-392 |
| Source | journals.cambridge.org/aso |
| Keywords | Ethnic groups ; Attitude ; Cognitive impairment ; Dementia ; Social surveys ; United States of America. |
| Annotation | The authors studied how older people describe others with cognitive impairment. 42 focus groups represented African-Americans, American Indians, Chinese Americans, Latinos, Vietnamese Americans and Whites other than Latinos (n=396, ages 50+) in nine locations in the United States. Axial coding connected categories and identified themes. The constant comparison method compared themes across ethnic groups. African-Americans, American Indians and Whites emphasised memory loss. African-Americans, American Indians, Latinos and White stressed withdrawal, isolation and repetitive speech. African-Americans, American Indians, Vietnamese Americans and Whites emphasised "slow thinking". Only Whites described mood swings and personality changes. Many participants attributed dementia to stress. Terms describing others with dementia included "Alzheimer's", "dementia", "senile", and "crazy". Euphemisms were common ("senior moment", "old timer's disease"). Responses focused on memory, with limited mention of other cognitive functions. Differences among ethnic groups in descriptions of cognitive health and cognitive impairment underscore the need to tailor public health messages about cognitive health to ways that people construe its loss, and to their interest in maintaining it, so that messages and terms used are familiar, understandable and relevant to the groups for which they are designed. Health promotion efforts should develop ethnically sensitive ways to address the widely held misperceptions that even serious cognitive impairment is a normal characteristic of ageing, and also to address stigma associated with cognitive impairment. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-130322201 A |
| Classmark | TK: DP: E4: EA: 3F: 7T |
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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