IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v62y2006i3p745-757.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Salience of self-identity roles in persons with dementia: Differences in perceptions among elderly persons, family members and caregivers

Author

Listed:
  • Cohen-Mansfield, Jiska
  • Parpura-Gill, Aleksandra
  • Golander, Hava

Abstract

In this study, we explored perceptions of the salience of self-identity in persons suffering from dementia as perceived by the participants themselves, by family, and by staff caregivers. Four types of role-identity were explored: professional, family role, hobbies/leisure activities, and personal attributes. Participants were 104 persons with dementia, 48 of whom attended six adult day care centers while 56 resided in two nursing homes in the Washington, DC metropolitan area. Participants, relatives, and staff members were interviewed to obtain information about past and present self-identity roles of participants and attitudes toward these roles. Findings demonstrate that the importance of role identities decreases over time and with the progression of dementia. The family role was found to be the most important and salient role identity according to all the informant groups. The professional role was the one that showed the steepest decline in importance from past to present. Gender differences were detected for the importance of professional role identity. Participants rated their roles in the past as less important and those in the present as more important compared to family members. Family members reported greater decline in the importance of role identities for those participants with greater cognitive impairment. Participants with moderate cognitive impairment reported greater decline in the importance of role identities than did the participants with severe cognitive impairment. Understanding the past and present self-identities of persons with diminished cognitive abilities is crucial in the effort to provide individualized care and enhance participant experiences.

Suggested Citation

  • Cohen-Mansfield, Jiska & Parpura-Gill, Aleksandra & Golander, Hava, 2006. "Salience of self-identity roles in persons with dementia: Differences in perceptions among elderly persons, family members and caregivers," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 62(3), pages 745-757, February.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:62:y:2006:i:3:p:745-757
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277-9536(05)00316-3
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Clare, Linda, 2003. "Managing threats to self: awareness in early stage Alzheimer's disease," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 57(6), pages 1017-1029, September.
    2. Cohen-Mansfield, Jiska & Golander, Hava & Arnheim, Giyorah, 2000. "Self-identity in older persons suffering from dementia: preliminary results," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 51(3), pages 381-394, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Janne Myhre & Johanne Bjørnstad Tonga & Ingun Dina Ulstein & Sevald Høye & Kari Kvaal, 2018. "The coping experiences of spouses of persons with dementia," Journal of Clinical Nursing, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 27(3-4), pages 495-502, February.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Beard, Renée L. & Fox, Patrick J., 2008. "Resisting social disenfranchisement: Negotiating collective identities and everyday life with memory loss," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 66(7), pages 1509-1520, April.
    2. Clare, Linda & Rowlands, Julia & Bruce, Errollyn & Surr, Claire & Downs, Murna, 2008. "'I don't do like I used to do': A grounded theory approach to conceptualising awareness in people with moderate to severe dementia living in long-term care," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 66(11), pages 2366-2377, June.
    3. Surr, Claire Alice, 2006. "Preservation of self in people with dementia living in residential care: A socio-biographical approach," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 62(7), pages 1720-1730, April.
    4. Hanna‐Mari Pesonen & Anne M. Remes & Arja Isola, 2013. "Diagnosis of dementia as a turning point among Finnish families: A qualitative study," Nursing & Health Sciences, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 15(4), pages 489-496, December.
    5. Rapp, Thomas, 2014. "Patients' diagnosis decisions in Alzheimer's disease: The influence of family factors," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 9-16.
    6. Langdon, Shani A. & Eagle, Andrew & Warner, James, 2007. "Making sense of dementia in the social world: A qualitative study," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 64(4), pages 989-1000, February.
    7. Berry, Brandon & Apesoa-Varano, Ester Carolina & Gomez, Yarin, 2015. "How family members manage risk around functional decline: The autonomy management process in households facing dementia," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 107-114.
    8. Smith, Robert Courtney, 2021. "Analytic autoethnography of familial and institutional social identity construction of My Dad with Alzheimer's: In the emergency room with Erving Goffman and Oliver Sacks," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 277(C).
    9. Thanh-Thao Luong & Van-Nam Huynh & Eunyoung Kim, 2023. "A Hybrid Use of Soft Systems Methodology for Developing a Framework of Evidence-Based Teaching for Hospitality and Tourism Instructors in Vietnam," Systemic Practice and Action Research, Springer, vol. 36(2), pages 241-274, April.
    10. Francine Ducharme & Line Beaudet & Alain Legault & Marie-Jeanne Kergoat & Louise Lévesque & Chantal Caron, 2009. "Development of an Intervention Program for Alzheimer's Family Caregivers Following Diagnostic Disclosure," Clinical Nursing Research, , vol. 18(1), pages 44-67, February.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:62:y:2006:i:3:p:745-757. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.