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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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| Disclosing a diagnosis of dementia: is age a factor? | | Author(s) | H C Heal, H J Husband |
| Journal title | Aging & Mental Health, vol 2, no 2, May 1998 |
| Pages | pp 144-150 |
| Source | http://www.tandfonline.com |
| Keywords | Dementia ; Diagnosis ; Family care ; Doctors ; United Kingdom. |
| Annotation | Increasing public awareness, coupled with the wider availability of drug therapies for some dementing conditions, means that carers are often informed of the diagnosis of dementia. However, it is unclear how much sufferers themselves are told about their diagnoses. The aims of this UK study were to investigate how many sufferers of dementia were given diagnostic information, whether their age was a factor in whether they learned this information, who told them, whether carers would wish to know themselves if they had dementia, and carers' reasons for giving or withholding diagnostic information. A self-report questionnaire was completed by 71 carers. Half of the sufferers had been told the diagnosis, more from their carers than their doctors. The age of the sufferer was found to be related to whether or not doctors told them their diagnosis. Most of the carers who had informed the sufferer said the sufferer had wanted to know, or needed a meaningful explanation of their difficulties. Carers who had not disclosed feared that diagnostic information would cause to much distress, or that their cognitive impairments were too great an obstacle. (AKM). |
| Accession Number | CPA-980612411 A |
| Classmark | EA: LK7: P6:SJ: QT2: 8 |
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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