Situational expectations and surveillance in families affected by dementia

Organising Uncertainties of Ageing and Cognition

Dados Bibliográficos

ID3628355
AutoresJames Rupert Fletcher (0000-0001-9198-4321, King's College London, autor correspondente)
Ano2022
Volume31
Fascículo1
Páginas64-80
Data de publicação2022-01-02
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoHealth Sociology Review (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 1446-1242 • E-ISSN: 1839-3551
EditoraInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/14461242.2021.1888653
PMID33593240
OpenAlexW3133287813
IdiomaEN
Referências citadas45

Recent political processes have rendered people with dementia an increasingly surveilled population. Surveillance is a contentious issue within dementia research, spanning technological monitoring, biomarker research and epidemiological data gathering. This paper explores surveillance in the relationships of people affected by dementia, how older relatives both with and without diagnoses are surveilled in everyday interactions, and the importance of expectations in guiding surveillance. This paper presents data from 41 in-depth interviews with people affected by dementia living in the community in the United Kingdom. Agedness was a key contributor to expectations that a person may have dementia, based on previous experiences, media accounts and wider awareness. Expectations provoked surveillance in interactions, with participants looking for signs of dementia when interacting with older relatives. Older people also enacted self-surveillance, monitoring their own behaviour. Various actions could be attributed to dementia because interpretation is malleable, partly vindicating expectations while leaving some uncertainties. Expectant surveillance transformed people's experiences because they organised their own actions, and interpreted those of others, in line with pre-existing meanings. The ability to interpret behaviours to fit expectations can bring coherence to uncertainties of ageing, cognition and dementia, but risks ascribing dementia to many older people who straddle those uncertainties

Ageing · Cognition · Cognitive decline · Cognitive psychology · Dementia · Political science · Project commissioning · Psychiatry · Public relations · Publishing · Situation awareness · Situational ethics · Sociology · Aging, Elder Care, and Social Issues · Engineering · Law · Medicine · Psychoanalysis and Psychopathology Research · Psychology · Social Psychology · Social Representations and Identity · Gerontology