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Caring for a person with Alzheimer's disease - the perspective of a carer
Abstract
Alzheimer's Disease in the twenty-first century is becoming a challenge not only for medicine but also from a social point of view. This is because it influences the family environment of the patient. This paper aims to show the scope and character of this impact. By resorting to the methods of objective hermeneutics, open, in-depth interviews were conducted with eight people acting as guardians (these people belonged to the group of my close friends) were gained. The subject of care was five people who have Alzheimer's. The research conclusions indicate that caring for Alzheimer's patients impresses a negative mark on the carers' psycho-physical condition, sometimes due to mutual dependence. In order to account for the predicament of a peculiar symbiosis between the patient and the carer, we have suggested the term "Alzheimer's complex." Based on the answers provided to the central question of the interview: "what is most difficult and distressing in the process of prolonged caring for an Alzheimer's patient?" four categories illuminating this difficulty have been isolated: 1. Lack of knowledge concerning AD and carers' uncertainty as to the correctness of undertaken actions that results from it. 2. The awareness of the inevitability of the Disease's progress due to the lack of medicaments to prevent the deterioration of the patient's condition. 3. The long-term deterioration of the patient's health is connected with the growing endangerment of the carer's health. 4. Gradual and then complete isolation of the carer, leading to loneliness and the resulting psychic illnesses.
Keywords:
Alzheimer’s disease, caregiver of a person with Alzheimer’s disease, “Alzheimer’s complex”, the effects of long-term care for a person with Alzheimer’s diseaseMost read articles by the same author(s)
- Jerzy Semków, Learning old age and learning in old age: an individual perspective , Exlibris Social Gerontology Journal: Vol. 13 No. 1 (2017): Active and Healthy Ageing
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