Centre for Policy on Ageing
 

 

Dementia and the phenomenon of social death
Author(s)Helen Sweeting, Mary Gilhooly
Journal titleSociology of Health & Illness, vol 19, no 1, January 1997
Pagespp 93-117
KeywordsDementia ; Death ; Dying ; Family relationships ; Family care ; Interviewing.
AnnotationThis paper presents the results of an exploratory study which examined the extent to which social death may occur before biological death among old people with dementia. One hundred semi-structured interviews were conducted with caregiving relatives of dementia sufferers. Ratings were made of the degree to which carers appeared to believe their dementing dependent was socially (or 'as good as') dead, as well as note taken of behaviour suggesting that they had discounted the sufferer in social terms. In over a third of caregiving relatives, there was evidence of both beliefs and behaviours suggesting a degree of social death had occurred before the sufferer's biological death. Perceiving a sufferer in ways which could be characterised as socially dead was not necessarily combined with behaving as though they were. Examples of degrees of social death are presented and discussed against the background of increasing numbers of dementia sufferers in modern Western societies.
Accession NumberCPA-970221017 A
ClassmarkEA: CW: CX: DS:SJ: P6:SJ: 3DL

Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing

...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing.
 

CPA home >> Ageinfo Database >> Queries to: webmaster@cpa.org.uk