The Social Construction of the Senile Dementia Based on the Self-Statement by an 80-year Aged

DOI

10.2991/essd-19.2019.139How to use a DOI?

Keywords

social construction, senile dementia, self-statement, participated observation

Abstract

This research is a longitudinal study with an 80-year-old woman through participatory observation and informal interviews, focusing on the daily life of an elder with mental disabilities, trying to reveal her inner world. The observations show that although the elder is able to maintain a long-term interaction of quality with the researchers, as a member of the nursing home, she has a poor relationship with neighbors and staff. The analysis of the interview text demonstrates that the self-narrative of the elder mainly revolves around the three levels of self of Chinese people: individual, others and society, with the aim of generating a sense of satisfaction in life. Because of the big gap between the elder’s unsatisfactory real life and her ideal story of self-construction, her self-narrative often demonstrates defensive forgetting, and she maintains self-esteem by demeaning others living together with her, which leads to a bad interpersonal interaction. Others in society use the concept of “senile dementia” to construct the story of demented old people, while the elders will explain their emotional behavior by internalizing this social construction in order to adapt to aging. It can be seen from the case investigated that Alzheimer's disease is not only a medical concept, but more of a concept constructed by society. Speaking of the intervention treatment of demented elders, it may be more valuable to focus on the improvement of the social environment.

Copyright

© 2019, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Tangsheng Wang
AU  - Zhiqi Guo
AU  - Yannan Zhang
PY  - 2019/07
DA  - 2019/07
TI  - The Social Construction of the Senile Dementia Based on the Self-Statement by an 80-year Aged
BT  - Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Education Science and Social Development (ESSD 2019)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 636
EP  - 644
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/essd-19.2019.139
DO  - 10.2991/essd-19.2019.139
ID  - Wang2019/07
ER  -