Narrative Identity and Dementia
Narrative Identity and Dementia

Author: Marie A Mills

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-08-10

Total Pages: 283

ISBN-13: 0429829450

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First published in 1998, this book is a study on the influence of emotions on autobiographical memory in dementia. Based on eight in-depth case-studies of older people with dementia, collected over a two year period, the general findings of this innovative study reveal the strength and durability of the personal narrative even as cognitive processes decline. Using a psychotherapeutic approach, the author is able to demonstrate that the retention of a personal past give a sense of narrative identity and well-being to sufferers of dementia and has an important part to play in dementia care training. Researchers, teachers and students will find this book a useful resource, together with those who work in the field of ageing and dementia care.

Reconsidering Dementia Narratives
Reconsidering Dementia Narratives

Author: Rebecca Bitenc

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-07-05

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13: 0429619502

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Reconsidering Dementia Narratives explores the role of narrative in developing new ways of understanding, interacting with, and caring for people with dementia. It asks how the stories we tell about dementia – in fiction, life writing and film – both reflect and shape the way we think about this important condition. Highlighting the need to attend to embodied and relational aspects of identity in dementia, the study further outlines ways in which narratives may contribute to dementia care, while disputing the idea that the modes of empathy fostered by narrative necessarily bring about more humane care practices. This cross-medial analysis represents an interdisciplinary approach to dementia narratives which range across auto/biography, graphic narrative, novel, film, documentary and collaborative storytelling practices. The book aims to clarify the limits and affordances of narrative, and narrative studies, in relation to an ethically driven medical humanities agenda through the use of case studies. Answering the key question of whether dementia narratives align with or run counter to the dominant discourse of dementia as ‘loss of self’, this innovative book will be of interest to anyone interested in dementia studies, ageing studies, narrative studies in health care, and critical medical humanities.

Entangled Narratives
Entangled Narratives

Author: Lars-Christer Hydén

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 249

ISBN-13: 0199391572

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As people are living longer on average than ever before, the number of those with dementia will increase. Because many will live a considerable time at home with their diagnosis, we need to know more about the ways people can adapt to and learn to live with dementia in their everyday lives. Lars-Christer Hyd n argues in this book that to do so will involve re-imagining what dementia really is and what it can mean to the afflicted and their loved ones. One of the most important everyday opportunities for sharing experiences is the simple act of storytelling. But when someone close to you gradually loses the ability to tell stories and cherish the shared history you have together, this is seen as a threat to the relationship, to the feeling of belonging together, and to the identity of the person diagnosed. Therefore, learning about how people with dementia can participate in storytelling along with their families and friends helps to sustain those relationships and identities. In Entangled Narratives, Hyd n not only emphasizes the possibilities that are inherent in collaborative storytelling, but instructs professionals and otherwise healthy relatives to learn how to effectively listen and, ultimately, re-imagine their patients and loved ones as collaborative meaning-makers in their lives.

Dementia
Dementia

Author: Julian C. Hughes

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 326

ISBN-13: 019856614X

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This study juxtaposes philosophical analysis and clinical experience to present an overview of the issues surrounding dementia. It conveys a strong ethical message, arguing in favour of treating people with dementia with all the dignity they deserve as human beings.

Dancing with Dementia
Dancing with Dementia

Author: Christine Bryden

Publisher: Jessica Kingsley Publishers

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 204

ISBN-13: 9781843103325

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Christine Bryden was a top civil servant and single mother of three children when she was diagnosed with dementia at the age of 46. Dancing with Dementia is a vivid account of her experiences of living with dementia, exploring the effects of memory problems, loss of independence, difficulties in communication and the exhaustion of coping with simple tasks. She describes how, with the support of her husband Paul, she continues to lead an active life nevertheless, and explains how professionals and carers can help. This book is a thoughtful exploration of how dementia challenges our ideas of personal identity and of the process of self-discovery it can bring about.

Thinking about Dementia
Thinking about Dementia

Author: Annette Leibing

Publisher: Rutgers University Press

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 263

ISBN-13: 0813538033

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Cultural responses to most illnesses differ; dementia is no exception. These responses, together with a society's attitudes toward its elderly population, affect the frequency of dementia-related diagnoses and the nature of treatment. Bringing together essays by nineteen respected scholars, this unique volume approaches the subject from a variety of angles, exploring the historical, psychological, and philosophical implications of dementia. Based on solid ethnographic fieldwork, the essays employ a cross-cultural perspective and focus on questions of age, mind, voice, self, loss, temporality, memory, and affect. Taken together, the essays make four important and interrelated contributions to our understanding of the mental status of the elderly. First, cross-cultural data show the extent to which the aging process, while biologically influenced, is also very much culturally constructed. Second, detailed ethnographic reports raise questions about the behavioral criteria used by health care professionals and laymen for defining the elderly as demented. Third, case studies show how a diagnosis affects a patient's treatment in both clinical and familial settings.; Finally, the collection highlights the gap that separates current biological understandings of aging from its cultural meanings. As Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia continue to command an ever-increasing amount of attention in medicine and psychology, this book will be essential reading for anthropologists, social scientists, and health care professionals.

Living with Dementia
Living with Dementia

Author: Veljko Dubljević

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2021-01-22

Total Pages: 266

ISBN-13: 3030620735

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This book addresses current issues in the neuroscience and ethics of dementia care, including philosophical as well as ethical legal, and social issues (ELSIs), issues in clinical, institutional, and private care-giving, and international perspectives on dementia and care innovations. As such, it is a must-read for anyone interested in a well-researched, thought-provoking overview of current issues in dementia diagnosis, care, and social and legal policy. All contributions reflect the latest neuroscientific research on dementia, either broadly construed or in terms of the etiologies and symptoms of particular forms of dementia. Given its interdisciplinary and international scope, its depth of research, and its qualitative emphasis, the book represents a valuable addition to the available literature on neuroethics, gerontology, and neuroscientific memory research.

The Oxford Handbook of Identity Development
The Oxford Handbook of Identity Development

Author: Kate C. McLean

Publisher: Oxford Library of Psychology

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 625

ISBN-13: 0199936560

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Identity is defined in many different ways in various disciplines in the social sciences and sub-disciplines within psychology. The developmental psychological approach to identity is characterized by a focus on developing a sense of the self that is temporally continuous and unified across the different life spaces that individuals inhabit. Erikson proposed that the task of adolescence and young adulthood was to define the self by answering the question: Who Am I? There have been many advances in theory and research on identity development since Erikson's writing over fifty years ago, and the time has come to consolidate our knowledge and set an agenda for future research. The Oxford Handbook of Identity Development represents a turning point in the field of identity development research. Various, and disparate, groups of researchers are brought together to debate, extend, and apply Erikson's theory to contemporary problems and empirical issues. The result is a comprehensive and state-of-the-art examination of identity development that pushes the field in provocative new directions. Scholars of identity development, adolescent and adult development, and related fields, as well as graduate students, advanced undergraduates, and practitioners will find this to be an innovative, unique, and exciting look at identity development.

The Last Ocean
The Last Ocean

Author: Nicci Gerrard

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2020-08-11

Total Pages: 274

ISBN-13: 0525521984

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From the award-winning journalist and author, a lyrical, raw and humane investigation of dementia that explores both the journeys of the people who live with the condition and those of their loved ones After a diagnosis of dementia, Nicci Gerrard’s father, John, continued to live life on his own terms, alongside the disease. But when an isolating hospital stay precipitated a dramatic turn for the worse, Gerrard, an award-winning journalist and author, recognized that it was not just the disease, but misguided protocol and harmful practices that cause such pain at the end of life. Gerrard was inspired to seek a better course for all who suffer because of the disease. The Last Ocean is Gerrard’s investigation into what dementia does to both the person who lives with the condition and to their caregivers. Dementia is now one of the leading causes of death in the West, and this necessary book will offer both comfort and a map to those walking through it. While she begins with her father’s long slip into forgetting, Gerrard expands to examine dementia writ large. Gerrard gives raw but literary shape both to the unimaginable loss of one’s own faculties, as well as to the pain of their loved ones. Her lens is unflinching, but Gerrard honors her subjects and finds the beauty and the humanity in their seemingly diminished states. In so doing, she examines the philosophy of what it means to have a self, as well as how we can offer dignity and peace to those who suffer with this terrible disease. Not only will it aid those walking with dementia patients, The Last Ocean will prompt all of us to think on the nature of a life well lived.

Telling Stories
Telling Stories

Author: Deborah Schiffrin

Publisher: Georgetown University Press

Published: 2010-03-09

Total Pages: 231

ISBN-13: 1589016742

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Narratives are fundamental to our lives: we dream, plan, complain, endorse, entertain, teach, learn, and reminisce through telling stories. They provide hopes, enhance or mitigate disappointments, challenge or support moral order and test out theories of the world at both personal and communal levels. It is because of this deep embedding of narrative in everyday life that its study has become a wide research field including disciplines as diverse as linguistics, literary theory, folklore, clinical psychology, cognitive and developmental psychology, anthropology, sociology, and history. In Telling Stories leading scholars illustrate how narratives build bridges among language, identity, interaction, society, and culture; and they investigate various settings such as therapeutic and medical encounters, educational environments, politics, media, marketing, and public relations. They analyze a variety of topics from the narrative construction of self and identity to the telling of stories in different media and the roles that small and big life stories play in everyday social interactions and institutions. These new reflections on the theory and analysis of narrative offer the latest tools to researchers in the fields of discourse analysis and sociolinguistics.